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JOHN ALEXANDER 




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THE 

CONQUEST OF 

THE AIR 

The Rof?iance of Aerial Navigation 

By 

JOHN ALEXANDER 



With Preface by 

SIR HIRAM MAXIM 



NEW YORK 

A. WESSELS COMPANY 

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P R E F A C E. 



During the last ten years, I have received innumerable 
letters relating to aerial navigation from all parts of the 
-world. Thcise letters for the most part have been written 
by people totally unacquainted with the first principles of 
the question involved. Still each and every one of them 
has his own particular plan, which to his mind is sure to 
succeed ; but unhappily the majority of these gentlemen 
are quite unprovided with the necessary means to exploit 
their inventions, and in the kindness of their hearts, they 
appeal to me, expressing themselves as not only willing 
to give me the controlling interest, but even in some cases 
the greater part of the glory, providing that I will furnish 
the necessary cash to develop their inventions. 

Fully half of these inventors seem to have thought out 
a plan of performing mechanical flight by means of flying 
machines worked by man-power. They admit that their 
apparatus with a man to work it will weigh at least three 
hundred pounds, but they never appear to appreciate that 
in order to lift three hundred pounds directly into the air 
by mechanical effort, it would be necessary to expend at 
least three horse-power, or about thirty times as much 
power as a man is able to exert continuously for a single 
hour. The greater number of them s^e.n to imagine that 
the power can be increased almost ad infinitum^ providing 
that it is transmitted through a sufficient number of levers, 
and other mechanical movements. 



6 PREFACE. 

Next in number to the hand flying-machine inventors 
come those who would navigate the air by cigar-shaped 
balloons, and although none of them have anything new 
to offer, they all write as though they were the first to 
conceive of this particular form of balloon. 

Then we have a n-imLer of cran)' K.ventors who imagine 
that they have discovered a way of causing gravity to pull 
in the other direction, and a still less number who claim 
to have discovered how flying machines may be worked 
without any motive power at all, except by a system of 
springs, levers, and pistons, which to their mind gives a 
kind of an unbalanced pressure which will push the machine 
either upward or forward as may be desired. 

All these gentlemen expect courteous replies to their 
epistles, and I have thought that it would be a good p^an 
to publish a cheap, short, and concise treatise on flying 
machines and balloons, and then recommend each to 
purchase and read the work before writing to me a second 
time. 

By a perusal of Mr. Alexander's work, I am happy to 
find the exact treatise that I had in my mind. In this 
little publication, we have in one hundred and sixty poges 
the whole history of the subject ; in fact everything that is 
worth knowing, which although written in a short and 
concise manner is still very attractive, in a w^ord the exact 
book that is required at the present moment ; and I can 
recommend its careful perusal to everyone who is studying 
this much-discussed question. 




/C/i:yC?cy'UV</ 




CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

The Beginning of Balloons — Montgolfier's Fire- 
Balloon— Charles's Hydrogen Balloon — The First 
to Ascend — Green's use of Coal-gas and the 
Guide-rope . " 9 

CHAPTER 11. 

Some Famous Aerial Voyages — First Across the 
' Channel — The Adventures of Zambeccari — The 
Voyage of the '' Great Nas^sau " — Across the Alps 
— Seven Miles High — Colonel Burnaby • . 25 

CHAPTER IH. 

Achievements of Recent and Living Balloonists — 
Flammarion, Tissandier, and de Fonvielle — 
Andree, the Adriatic, and the North Pole — Rev. 
J. M. Bacon, Perceval and Stanley Spencer, 
Count de la Vaulx, etc. — The latest Channel 
Passage . • . . . . . . 45 

CHAPTER IV. 

A Race through the Clouds — Long-Distance Records 
— From Paris to Russia — Count de la Vaulx's 
Famous Victory 64 



5 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER V. 

PAGE 

The Exploits of Senor Santos-Dumont — The Principle 
of his Airships — First Round the Eiffel Tower — 
Shipwrecked in Mid-air . . , • .76 

CHAPTER VI. 

Santos-Dumont's Achievements — Failure and Success 

— " King of the Air " — Ambitious Projects . . 95 

CHAPTER Vn. 

Scientific Ballooning— The Colour of the Sky — Effects 

of Height— Air-currents, etc. • • • • 104 

CHAPTER VHT. 

The Balloon in War— Its Use in the Past — Probable 
Development — For Signalling — Firing a Mine 
from a Balloon . . . , , • . 122 

CHAPTER IX. 

Airships of Yesterday and To-Day— Sir Hiram Maxim 
—Dr. Barton— T. H. Bastin— William Beedle— 
An Austrian Failure, etc. . • • • • 132 

CHAPTER X. 

Is Aerial Navigation Practicable ? — The Limits of 
Ballooning — Santos-Dumont's and Sir Hiram 
Maxim's Opinions — A Humane Use for the 
Balloon 150 



THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR 



CHAPTER I. 



The Beginning of Balloons — IMontgolfier's Fire-Balloon — 
Charles's Hydrogen Falloon — The First to Ascend— Green's 
use of Coal-gas and the Guide-rope. 

The more we know of invention and human in- 
genuity the more are we constrained to the admission 
that Solomon w^as everlastingly right when he said 
that there was nothing new under the sun. At 
first this remark may appear singularly inappropriate 
when we come to consider aeronautics ; but we are 
not long in discovering that, though we may choose 
to regard the brothers Montgolfier as the discoverers 
of the balloon, and the end of the eighteenth century 
as its birthtime, we can never hope to reckon without 
endless instances of balloons and flying -machines 
long before these ingenious gentlemen lived. 

From earliest times man's thoughts had flow^n 
upward like the sparks, and it was the most natural 
of all desires in man to imitate the birds in their 
glorious freedom of winged flight. At a very early 
period in his history he had brought the sea under 



10 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

his dominion, and sighing for fresh fields of conquest, 
why not the upper ocean at the bottom of which 
he Hved ? 

The classic story of Daedalus naturally occurs to 
the mind. How that celebrated Grecian artist and 
inventor is said to have devised wings for himself 
and his son Icarus, when they were both imprisoned 
in Crete ; and how by means of these Daedalus suc- 
ceeded in flying across the sea to Cumae, though 
Icarus was drowned by soaring so high that the 
heat of the sun melted the wax with which his 
wdngs were fastened ! The Icarian Sea is named 
after this early aerial disaster. The story may be a 
fable, but this celebrated Athenian was the inventor 
of sails, — he also invented the axe, the wimble, the 
wedge, and the level, — and it is possible that his 
escape from the captivity of King Minos in Crete 
was accomplished by some ingenious use of sails. 

But all the earliest attempts at flight through the 
air were on the lines of Daedalus's w^inged escape. 
" The birds fly ; why not we ? " This would be the 
attitude of the ancients, and we know what their 
attitude was after they attempted it. 

The early records of our own country contain not 
a few references to misguided people who thought 
they could fly. There was, for instance, Oliver of 
Malmesbury, a learned monk, who made a sorry 
attempt, and charged his failure to the fact that he 
had forgotten to put on a broad tail of feathers. 
Others did not survive to discuss their failures. The 
earliest would-be flyer who appeared in Scotland 
must have been something of a humourist. He was 



AN EARLY FLYING-MACHINE. 



II 



an Italian, and he endeavoured to show James VI. 
and his court that flying was an easy matter to a 
clever fellow. Equipped with a pair of huge wings, 
worked by cords, the adventurer leapt from the wall 
of Stirling Castle, and, as might have been expected, 
speedily reached the ground. His reasoning on this 
unlucky result is worthy of being preserved : 

" My wings," said he, " were composed of various 




THE FLYING-MACniNE OF BARTHOLOMEO LOURENCO DE GUSMAO. 



feathers ; among them were the feathers of a dunghill 
fowl, and they, by a certain sympathy, were attracted to 
the dunghill on which I fell ; whereas, had my wings 
been composed of feathers of eagles alone, as I pro- 
posed, the same sympathy would have attracted my 
machine to the higher regions of the air." Still the 
favour of a fall on a dunghill was not to be despised. 

Another monk— this time a Brazilian, named 
Bartholomeo Lourenco de Gusmao — seems to have 



12 THE C0NQUP:ST OF THE AIR. 

been so successful, early in the eighteenth century, 
that he was put to death as a sorcerer. The Eveni7tg 
Post newspaper of December 22nd, 1709, contained 
a description of this early Brazilian flying-machine. 
We also reproduce a drawing of the thing copied from 
an old cut. The ship was scallop-wise at both ends, 
and had sails which turned as they were directed. 
There were two wings to keep it upright, and a 
stern to govern it. In the body, at each end, were 
a pair of bellows to be blown when there was no 
wind, and two globes of metal to cover two loadstones 
to draw the ship after them. The body was of thin 
iron plates covered with straw mats, for ten or twelve 
men besides the constructor. Above the body was 
a network of iron wire, on which were fastened large 
amber beads, ^' which by secret operation would help 
to keep the ship aloft; also by the sun's heat the 
mats that lined the ship would be drawn to the amber 
beads. The aeronaut, by the help of the celestial 
globe, a sea-map, and compass, was to take the height 
of the sun, thereby to find out the spot of land over 
^^ hich they were on the globe of the earth." 

The desire to fly and the delusion that it is an 
easy matter have often been experienced by people 
who could give no reason for either. Ruskin tells 
us that, as a child, he used to tliink he could fly 
downstairs. He does not say that he ever tested 
his belief. Many of our readers will have experi- 
enced similar delusions in their early days. The 
literature of the young has always had a place for 
flying-men and flying-machines ; the classic of that 
kind being, of course, Jules Verne's Five Weeks in a 



THE FIRST BALLOON. 1 3 

Balloon. Cyrano de Bcrgerac and Edgar Allan Poe, 
to say nothing of Mr. H. G. Wells, have written of 
flights through the air for children of older growth. 
It should also be added that more than two hundred 
years ago a certain King of Burma used to be 
entertained by a clever native w^ho had invented 
something which seems to have resembled our 
modern parachute, wherewith he descended from 
great heights to the amusement of the Burmese 
Court. 

Whatever the first attempt may have been like, 
w^hatever was its result, of this w^e may be sure, that 
it took place long ages before the Montgolfiers dis- 
covered that heated air could raise a balloon into the 
skies. That, how^ever, must be our starting-place in 
this story of the balloon and its beginnings. 

Joseph and Etienne (Stephen) Montgolfier were 
managers of a paper-work at Annonay, in France, 
and it was Etienne who first demonstrated the 
practicability of the theories put forw^ard by two 
scientists of his time, Cavallo and Dr. Black, that 
solid bodies could be raised in the atmosphere by 
being attached to vessels filled with gas of a lighter 
specific gravity than the surrounding air. Cavallo in 
1772 had filled and floated soap bubbles with hydrogen 
in proof of his theory. 

In 1783 Etienne succeeded, after many failures, 
in raising to a height of 1,500 feet a large balloon of 
linen and paper, thirty-five feet in diameter. In shape 
this balloon was much the same as thousands that 
have since been made : an ordinary sphere, and the 
gas was generated by burning moist straw, w^ool, 



14 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR, 

and rags placed on an iron brazier beneath an opening 
at the bottom of the great bag. 

For all practical purposes this was the first balloon. 
The invention created great excitement in France, 
which has remained to this day the home of balloon- 
ing. Paris immediately started a subscription to 
construct a great fire-balloon or " montgolfiere," as 
they were called for many a day. The Montgolfiers 
were the heroes of the hour, patronised even by the 
king. Curiously enough, Etienne had not sufficient 
courage to trust himself to be borne aloft by the 
balloon he had invented. 

The first aerial travellers by balloon were a sheep, 
a cock, and a duck, sent up in a cage attached to a 
montgolfiere, which the inventor raised at Versailles 
in September of 1783 before the king and court. 

The previous month M. Charles, Professor of Natural 
Philosophy in Paris, had gone one better than Mont- 
golfier, and sent aloft from the Champs de Mars a 
fine balloon filled with hydrogen, which gas had been 
first discovered by Cavendish in 1775. This balloon 
was thirteen feet in diameter. To the present 
day hydrogen remains the best material for in- 
flating, being used by Seiior Santos-Dumont, though 
it is much too expensive for all but the millionaire 
balloonist. Professor Charles's balloon fell at 
Gonesse, fifteen miles from Paris, about an hour after 
it had been sent up, and the amazement with which 
the peasantry witnessed its descent has been described 
in these words : 

** It is supposed by many to have come from 
another world ; many fly, others, more sensible, think 



THE FIRST AERIAL TRAVELLERS. I 5 

it is a monstrous bird. After it has alighted there is 
some motion in it from the gas it still contains. A 
small crowd gains courage from numbers, and for an 
hour approaches by gradual steps, hoping, meanwhile, 
tlx monster will take flight. At length, one bolder 
than the rest takes his gun, stalks carefully to within 
shot, fires, witnesses the monster shrink, gives a shout 
of triumph, and the crowd rushes in with flails and 
pitchforks. One tears what he thinks to be the skin 
and causes a poisonous stench ; again all retire. 
Shame, no doubt, now urges them on, and they tie 
the cause of alarm to the tail of a horse, who gallops 
across the country, tearing it to shreds." 

The government even found it necessary to send a 
proclamation throughout the country explaining what 
a balloon was, and counselling the country-folk not 
to be alarmed if they happened to see one. In our 
own day the Russian Government had to do a very 
similar thing in connection with Andree's attempt to 
reach the North Pole in a balloon. Some parts cf 
the world move with the ages, others remain stock 
still. 

The distinction of being the first of men to ascend 
into the air by means of a balloon belongs neither to 
the Montgolfiers nor to Professor Charles. Strangely 
enough, this honour rests with two men who ascended 
together, and one of whom — the Marquis d'Arlandes 
— was subsequently " broke for cowardice " in the 
discharge of his military duties at the beginning of 
the French Revolution. Pilatre de Rosier was the 
name of his companion in the first balloon ascent, 
which took place from the palace of La Muettc 



l6 THE CONQUEST OF THE An<. 

in the Bois de Boulogne, Paris, on November 2 1st, 

1783- 

From this time forward, according to an old writer, 
until the fatal termination of his career, M. Pilatre de 
Rosier seems to have devoted himself entirely to the 
practice and improvement of the art of aerostation ; 
a pursuit in which, however, he was not long destined 
to continue. On June iSth, 1785, in company with 
a young gentleman, named Romain, he ascended at 
Boulogne sur Mcr with the intention of crossing the 
channel into England by means of his balloon. 
Unfortunately the arrangements which he adopted to 
secure his success were the cause of his failure as 
well as of his destruction. In order to counteract 
the fluctuations consequent upon all aerial excursions 
under the ordinary circumstances, and obtain the 
power of increasing or diminishing the weight of his 
apparatus at will, without the usual expenditure of 
gas and ballast, he had conceived the idea of uniting 
in one the two systems of Montgolfier and Charles, 
and, accordingly, attached to the hydrogen balloon, 
by which the principal part of the weight was to be 
borne, a small montgolfiere or fire-ballon, by acting 
upon which he expected to be able to alter his 
specific gravity as occasion might require. As our 
authority points out, the theory was correct: the 
error lay in the application. Distended in the course 
of its elevation, the inflammable contents of the 
larger sphere soon filled the vacant portions of the 
silk, and pouring down the tube, which formed 
the neck of the balloon, speedily reached the furnace, 
which was disposed at its lawer extremity, and 



AN EARLY DISASTER. 1 7 

became ignited. The whole apparatus was consumed 
in the air, and the two unfortunate voyagers pre- 
cipitated upon the rocks which bound the shores of 
the sea between Calais and Boulogne. 

Concurrently with these French experiments two 
American scientists, Rittenhouse and Hopkins, of 
Philadelphia, were also experimenting ; and there is 
every reason for believing that their application of 
hydrogen to the inflation of a balloon was made 
independently of Professor Charles's experiment. 
Instead of one large balloon, however, their aerostat 
consisted of forty-seven small balloons, to which a 
cage was attached. The scientists, careful of their 
own necks, induced a working carpenter, named 
James Wilcox, for a monetary consideration, to 
ascend m this cage at Philadelphia on December 
28th, 1783, and thus the first American to soar aloft 
into the air of liberty did so as a meicenary. In 
descending he narrowly escaped the broken neck 
which his employers had dreaded. 

The next ascent was undertaken by Professor 
Charles from the Champs de Mars on December i8th, 
1783, in a balloon of twenty-seven feet in diameter, 
inflated with hydrogen. Charles was accompanied 
by a M. Robert, one of the makers of the balloon, 
and after returning to the ground, excited probably 
by his success and ignorant of the laws of ballast, he 
reascended alone, and went up with terrific velocity, 
owing to the sudden abstraction of so much weight. 
It is supposed that he reached an elevation of about 
10,500 feet. After having experienced, according to 
his own description, much inconvenience from the 

2 



l8 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

altitude he had attained, he effected his descent with- 
out further danger or damage. 

It is recorded by a contemporary pamphlet that 
MM. Charles and Robert were arrested, on returning 
to Paris, by order of the king, who, at the suggestion 
of two of his ecclesiastics, adopted this course to 
prevent the further endangering the lives of his sub- 
jects ; but they were speedily discharged. 

Joseph Montgolfier would now appear to have 
summoned up courage to risk a rise — or a fall — in a 
fire-balloon at Lyons, on January 19th, 1784. The 
experiment was one of the most important of all 
the early ascents, being on a scale which was not 
exceeded for many years after. It will, therefore, be 
well to give a very full account of it, drawn from 
one of the earliest writers on aeronautics. The 
balloon employed was a pyriform vessel, constructed 
of two layers of linen cloth, enclosing one of paper 
between them (for the purpose of increasing its 
imperviousness), and measured, when fully inflated, 
130 feet in height and 105 feet in breadth. It was 
capable of containing 40,000 cubic feet of air, and, 
when charged for the ascent, supported with ease 
seven persons and ballast to the amount of I ton 
9 cwts. independent of its various accessories ; its 
car, in the form of a gallery, seventy-two feet in 
circumference, accommodated with seats, four feet 
wide and eight apart ; its furnace, twenty feet in 
diameter, with its fuel made up into faggots of wood 
and straw; its massive framework to maintain the 
lower aperture ; its drapery, netting, cordage, im- 
plements, and other requisites all in the same 



JOSEPH MONTGOLFIERS ONLY ASCENT. I9 

proportion, the approximate weight of which it would 
be impossible now to determine. 

The names of those who participated in the honour 
of this expedition were, Joseph Montgolfier himself, 
under whose direction the whole had been got up, 
Pilatre de Rosier, le Comte de Laurencin, le Marquis 
dj Dampierre, le Comte d'Anglefort, le Prince Charles 
de Lignes, and a young man named Fontaine, who, 
happening to be in the car at the moment when, 
suddenly lightened by the hasty departure of another 
gentleman, it escaped into the air, became accidently 
included in the party. In a few seconds it rose to 
an elevation of about 3,000 feet ; an opening, however, 
of about four feet in length, which appeared about the 
equator of the balloon, soon brought it down again, 
with a velocity even greater than its ascent, and it 
reached the ground at a distance of about 12,000 feet 
from the place of its departure. 

There is no record of Joseph Montgolfier ever 
having repeated the performance, and the next 
ascent worthy of notice was the first that took 
place from British soil. This experiment has the 
triple distinction of being the first by a native of 
Great Britain, the first in our own country, and the 
only one for half a century ever carried out on 
the principle of the Montgolfiers' fire-balloon. The 
name of the daring Britisher was James Tytler, and 
Comely Gardens, Edinburgh, was the scene of his 
ascent. It took place on August 27th, 1784, and 
is thus described by an eye-witness in the Londo7z 
Clironicle : 

*' Early this morning this bold adventurer took his 



20 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

first aerial flight. The balloon being filled at Comely 
Gardens, he seated himself in the basket, and the 
ropes being cut, he ascended very high, and descended 
quite gradually on the road to Restalrig, about half 
a mile from the place where he rose, to the great 
satisfaction of those spectators who were present. 
Mr. Tytler w^ent up without the furnace this morn- 
ing ; when that is added he will be able to feed the 
balloon with inflammable * air, and continue his 
aerial excursions as long as he chooses. Mr. Tytler 
is now in high spirits, and in his turn laughs at 
those infidels who ridiculed his scheme as visionary 
and impracticable. Mr. Tyller is the first person in 
Great Britain who has navigated the air." 

It is well that this exploit of Ty tier's should be 
remembered, as it is a common error to credit a Signor 
Lunardi, a gentleman attached to the Neapolitan 
Embassy in London, with having made the first 
ascent in England, though in reality his ascent was 
made from the Royal Artillery Grounds. Moorfields, 
on September 15th, 1784, almost a month after 
Tytler's performance. Lunaidi made many other 
c.scents in England and Scotland before returning 
to his native country to gratity the curiosity of 
the Italians, and, finally, to die in great poverty. 
The first balloon ever sent up in England was 
launched in London on November 25th, 1783, 
by Count Zambeccari ; but that celebrated aeronaut 
did not ascend himself until March 23rd, 1785, 
when, in company with Sir Edward Vernon, he 

* A misnomer due to the correspondent's ignorance of the 
principle of inflation. 



THE PRINXIPLE OF A PALLOON. 21 

made an aerial jouTiicy of twenty-five miles, land- 
in.^^ at Horsham in less than an hour from leaving 
London. Zambeccari was one of the earliest victims 
of the dangerous montgolfieres, having to make 
a fatal plunge from a burning balloon at Bologna 
on September 2ist, 1812. His companion on that 
occasion escaped, but with fearful injuries. 

Such, then, was the beginning of ballooning. It will 
be gathered that the montgolfiere was a very crude 
contrivance, and that a great step had been made 
the moment Professor Charles had proved the prac- 
ticability of hydrogen as a material for inflation. 
The wonder is that the fire-balloon remained in use 
as long as it did. Damp straw, rotten meat, old 
boots — these were the fuel with which the heated 
air was generated, and the stench from the fire, apart 
altogether from the danger of the thing, was most 
offensive. No wonder that Louis XVL wished to 
prevent respectable citizens from risking their lives 
in such contrivances, and desired that the first men 
to ascend in one of these fire -balloons should be 
two criminals condemned to death. The proud and 
courageous Rosier was indignant " that vile criminals 
should have the glory of being the first to rise in 
the air," and, as we have seen, he carried his point, 
and his was the glory. 

With the use of hydrogen the balloon became^, 
almost at one step, the machine which is familiar 
to all to-day, and has remained practically unchanged 
in any essential detail for upward of a hundred years. 
The principle of its construction is simplicity itself 
A large pear-shaped bag of silk or linen, or both, 



22 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

well varnished — to make it as nearly air-tight as 
possible — with an open neck hanging downwards, 
and at the top a valve which can be opened when 
the aeronaut wishes to descend by letting out a 
quantity of gas. Over the balloon is a network of 
rope meshes from which the car, or basket, is suspended. 

Ballast, in the shape of bags of sand to be thrown 
out as required, is the only method of changing 
the rate of upward progression, and vertical motion 
is the only direction in which the aeronaut has any 
control over the balloon. He cannot move it to 
the right or left ; there it is at the mercy of the 
air-currents. A handful of ballast thrown out may 
send it up twenty yards, a whole bag thrown out 
would mean an upward rush at a tremendous speed. 
Even a chicken bone thrown out of the car has 
caused a rise of thirty yards ! 

In the higher latitudes where the atmosphere 
becomes lighter the gas in the balloon expands, 
and for this reason the neck is left open, or fitted 
with a self-acting valve which enables the expanding 
gas to escape into the air. If the bag were closed 
it would burst when it reached the region of 
lighter air. 

It was to an Englishman, Charles Green, the 
most famous British aeronaut, who flourished in 
the first part of last century, that we owe the in- 
vention of the guide-rope and also the use of 
ordinary coal-gas for inflation. Hydrogen is much 
more buoyant, but many times more expensive 
and infinitely more difficult to apply. The guide- 
rope is used when travelling at any altitude up to 



GREEN AND THE GUIDE-ROPE. 23 

ipoo feet or thereabout above the ground. It hangs 
down from the car and, touching the ground, acts 
as a kind of support, enabhng tlie balloon to travel 
at a fixed height over great distances. The moment 




INFLATING A I'ALLOCN V> ITH COAT-'^AS, 

the rope trails on the ground the part touching the 
earth is Hke ballast thrown cut, and releases the 
balloon to that extent, while the part still hanging 
acts as ballast retained and equalises this effect. It is 
also of immense use in breaking the rate of descent 



24 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

and has often been the means of saving life. Since 
these inventions of Charles Green nothing has been 
done until quite recently to improve the construction 
of the balloon, as distinct from the aerial machine, 
and nothing more than the Herve deviator (of 
which some account is given further on) is ever 
likely to be added to the ordinary gas-balloon. 



CHAPTER II. 

Some Famous Aerial Voyages- First Across the Channel — The 
Adventures of Zambeccari — The Voyage of the '* Great 
Nassau " — Across the Alps — Seven Miles High — Colonel 
Burnaby. 

In our previous chapter we have dealt only with 
early ascents which could scarcely be dignified with 
the name of aerial voyages. We come now to the 
chronicling of some travels through the air that are 
worthy to rank with the most daring exploits of the 
world's famous explorers ; and the only difficulty in 
treating of this subject is deciding what to select for 
description. One could fill volumes with intensely 
interesting stories of aerial travel, so rich is the 
history of ballooning in adventure and surprise. We 
can only hope to mention briefly a few of the most 
notable of these celestial explorations. 

The first ambition which fired French aeronauts 
was to cross the channel and invade England from 
the sky. But it so happened that the process was 
reversed in the first instance, and, like a homing 
pigeon, a celebrated French aeronaut, Blanchard by 
name, crossed — in company with an American, who 
supplied the money for the balloon— from Dover to 
France on New Year's Day, 1785. Blanchard, who 

25 



26 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR 

was one of the first to attempt to fit a balloon with 
steering apparatus, had taken enthusiastically to the 
new pursuit, and developed great skill in it. He was 
anxious to make the first trip across the channel 
alone, and only took the American Jeffries with 
him on condition that if at a critical moment it 
was found there was one too many in the car Jeffries 
would jump out ! 

Their voyage was fairly exciting, and at one 
point, when all their ballast had been thrown out, 
as well as every item that could be dispensed with, 
down to a great part of the travellers' clothing, it 
looked as if Jeffries would have to keep his bond, 
for the balloon was still sinking. At the critical 
moment, however, it regained its buoyancy and 
eventually landed in France near the forest of Guincs, 
where the two adventurers, whose voyage had been 
a great source of excitement to the sailors afloat on 
the waters of the channel, embraced each other and 
opined that they were " the most celebrated men in 
the whole world." The King of France commanded 
Blanchard to appear at court, and awarded him a 
pension of fifty pounds. 

Altogether Blanchard made about forty aerial 
voyages; and his wife also become famous as a 
balloonist, eventually to be dashed to death over 
Paris, on July 7th, 1819, by her balloon becoming 
ignited through the discharge of some fireworks which 
she had foolishly taken up, the occasion being a 
fete at the Tivoli Gardens. 

As we have already heard, Count Zambeccari, in 
March of the year 1785 made a voyage from London 



ZAMBECCARI'S ADVENTURES. 27 

to Horsham almost worthy of inclusion under our 
present heading ; but his other exploits were far 
more important. His descents into the Adriatic in 
1803 and in 1804 were the most remarkable of his 
vo}^ages. On the latter occasion he was accompanied 
by Dr. Grassetti and Pascal Andreoli. 

The balloon was a montgolfieie, and had a rudder, 
which only rendered it the more dangerous. They 
ascended from Bologna at night, hoping that the 
north-east w^ind then blowing w^ould carry them 
to Milan. The ascent was far more rapid than 
Zambeccari had reckoned on, and they shot up into 
a region of intense cold. The count, who had been 
without food for twenty-four hours, soon fell to t'^e 
bottom of the car in a faint, while Grassetti also 
lost consciousness, and Andreoli addressed himself 
to the task of reviving them. 

When Zambeccari regained his senses the aeronauts 
could form no idea as to where they had drifted. 
Presently the dread sound of breaking waves was 
heard, and the count hastily tried to throw out a 
bag of sand, but before he could do so, the car was 
dragging through the roaring waters of the Adriatic. 

What a terrible situation in the dusk of early 
morning, for it was just a little after three o'clock 
when the involuntary descent occurred! Madly did 
the two aeronauts throw^ overboard every bag of 
ballast, and cut away everything that could be dis- 
pensed with. The result was another ascent, more 
rapid, more fearful than the first. They gained an 
altitude such as no mortal man had ever reached 
before. Their clothes became coated wi'th ice. 



28 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

Andreoli bled profusely, and the poor doctor still 
lay as one dead. 

A half-hour was passed in this region of killing 
cold, and then down fell the balloon again, for the 
wretched furnace had failed in its work — thanks to 
the waves, no doubt — and the envelope was largely 
depleted of heated air. The balloon now served as 
a sail, and dragged the frail car through the water, 
while the worn-out adventurers abandoned themselves 
to their fate. Daylight at last, and they saw the 
shore four miles away. They were being dragged 
rapidly thither, but suddenly the wind changed and 
blew them out to sea again. Some boats put off 
to rescue them, but when they drew near the sailors 
were amazed at the uncanny spectacle and, ever 
superstitious, drew back inshore. Fortunately a 
vessel hove in sight, and the captain had the sense 
to comprehend the situation, so that the balloonists 
were rescued. The balloon, freed from their weight 
and cut adrift from the car, soared aloft with amazing 
rapidity and was for ever lost — a derelict of the 
upper ocean ! 

One of the next longest voyages was also an in- 
voluntary one. It came in the experience of another 
French aeronaut, A. J. Garncrin, who, in an ascent 
from the Tivoli Gardens at Paris on September 2ist, 
1807, in a balloon decorated with lamps and con- 
taining fireworks for an aerial display, soon found 
himself in a dangerous pass, owing to the distension 
of his balloon and the inability under which he 
lay of discharging the gas, for fear of its taking fire 
at some of the numerous lamps, that, owing to 



FIRST USE OF A PARACHUTE. 29 

the distance at which they were disposed, he was 
unable to extinguish. 

In these straits, says an early writer, he was fain 
to continue until the following morning, when the 
lights expiring of their own accord, permitted him 
to take the necessary steps for his descent. The 
name of Garnerin is, however, moie particularly 
remembered on account of his having been the first 
who ever safely descended from a balloon by means 
of a parachute : an exploit which he originally per- 
formed in an ascent from Paris, on October 2rst, 
1797, and afterwards repeated on other occasions 
in England, France, and various places on the 
Continent. The number of his ascents is said to 
have exceeded fifty. 

The science or art of ballooning had already be- 
com.e a profession at which many men and some 
women were making their living. There was, indeed, 
but little science about it, as most of these early 
ascents and voyages were undertaken either for public 
amusement or adventure, few for scientific purposes. 
Many years passed without science profiting to any 
extent from aeronautics. But the purely scientific 
aspect of the pursuit is left for special treatment in 
our next chapter. 

It was not until 1836 that any outstanding 
achievement again attracted universal attention, and 
this time, we are happy to record, the honour lay 
with Englishm.en. Charles Green, to whom reference 
has already been made as the most famous aeronaut 
of his time, although he may be regarded as the 
father of modern ballooning, was not a scientist, 








I? 



... 1 



^^C:::^^ 



I'l 



^M- 






CHARLES GREEN. 



ROBERT HOLLOND, MP. 



MONCK MASON. 



The aeronauts who made the first balloon voyage from England to Germany 

in 1836. 



THE "GREAT NASSAU." 3 I 

and his accomplishments were afl associated with 
the practical side of ballooning. In his time 
some of the pleasure gardens in London had 
balloons for public entertainment, just as the 
Crystal Palace has to-day, and it was at these 
resorts that Green practised his art. His greatest 
project was carried out in an immense balloon 
belonging to the Vauxhall Gardens and in the 
company of two gentlemen of leisure, one being 
Robert Hollond, a member of Parliament, the other, 
Monck Mason, who has left a full account of their 
great voyage in his book Aeronaiitica, a crude 
literary performance, but a mine of information 
to the historian of aeronautics. 

The balloon in which this famous aerial voyage was 
effected was afterwards named the '' Great Nassau," for 
a reason which will appear in due course. It was built 
by Green, and was on a gigantic scale. Pear-shaped, 
as will be seen from our illustration (page 37), it had 
a very elegant appearance, and was made of the 
best silk, specially woven. Each gore was about forty- 
four inches wide, and coloured alternately white 
and crimson. Down each seam, and worked in the 
original material, was a ridge of extra thickness to 
increase its strength. Its height was over sixty feet 
and it was nearly forty feet in diameter. It could 
hold 85,000 cubic feet of gas, and had a lifting power 
of 4,000 pounds. The car of wicker-work had two 
seats at each side capable of accommodating three 
persons, and in the centre a bench to keep the 
wicker-work in shape and also to serve as a frame 
for raising or lowering the guide-rope, to test 



32 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

which was one of the objects of the journey. The 
car was suspended by ten stout ropes to an ash 
hoop six feet in diameter, which hung from the net- 
work covering the balloon. It was fitted with a 
stock of provisions to last a fortnight in case of 
emergency, and, for greater safety, instead ot a stove 
for heating coffee or other liquor, was a machine 
which generated heat by means of slaking quicklime. 
But a lamp was used for giving light at night. The 
balloon of course, was inflated with ordinary gas. 
A few scientific instruments were also carried. 

At half-past one on Monday, November 7th, 1836, 
the memorable voyage commenced in " uncommonly 
fine w^eather." It was nearly three o'clock when they 
crossed the Medway, and soon they were scudding 
over Canterbury, into which they lowered a small 
parachute with a letter to the mayor. As the evening 
came on and the air grew colder the condensation 
which took place on the balloon gradually caused 
it to fall, until they were running so low that they 
frightened partridges from their covers and could see 
the birds distinctly. Mason also records the dismay 
which the balloon occasioned among a colony of 
rocks as it passed over some woods. The travellers 
were in great spirits, and Mason waxes enthusiastic 
about the joy of ballooning : '^ The most delightful and 
sublime of all sublunary enjoyments ! " he exclaims. 

When the balloon was over Dover Castle it was 
travelling at the rate of twenty-five miles an hour, 
and presently they were skimming across the English 
Channel. Mason, in atrocious English, describes the 
scene : 



OVER THE CHANNEL IN A BALLOON. 



33 



" On either side below us the interminable ocean 
spread its complicated tissue of waves without in- 
terruption or curtailment, except what arose from 
the impending darkness, and the limited extent of 
our own perception. Slightly agitated by a wind, 
unfelt by us, its pliant surface glistened faintly as it 
rose and fell, catching for an instant by the momen- 
tary obliquity of its parts the few rays of light that 




THE " GREAT NASSAU " AT NIGHT, PASSING OVER THE DISTRICT 
OF LIEGE, IN BELGIUM. 

{From a sketch by Monck Mason.) 

still lingered above the horizon and losing them again 
as they turned their opposing outlines towards a 
darker quarter." 

Through openings in the floor of cloud, which lay 
beneath them when they rose into higher altitudes, 
they could occasionally see a solitary ship flit across 

3 



34 THE CONQUEST OF THE AH^. 

the stretch of sea thus revealed, " like the spectral 
representation in some magic lantern." In an hour 
from leaving the shore of England they were floating 
tranquilly over the fair fields of France now darkening 
under the pall of night (5.50 p.m.). 

So speedily and easily had they crossed the 
channel that there had been no opportunity to test 
the copper floats attached to their guide-rope, for the 
purpose of using that to the same effect as on land. 
But once over the land a guide-rope of about a 
thousand feet was let out and acted perfectly, the 
balloon steadily proceeding on its way through the 
air, if one can so describe a progress which is abso- 
lutely imperceptible to those in the car. 

The delight with which the voyagers saw the 
landscape of night is expressed not badly by Mason : 

" The whole plane of the earth's surface, for many 
and many a league around, as far and farther than 
the eye distinctly could embrace, seemed absolutely 
teeming with the scattered fires of a watchful popu- 
lation, and exhibited a starry spectacle below that 
almost rivalled in brilliancy the remoter lustre of the 
concave firmament above." 

And so they sped all through the lovely night, 
vaguely guessing at the land which lay beneath them, 
but rightly concluding that a *^ fiery region " over 
which they passed was the iron-smelting town of 
Liege in Belgium. *' The sky, at all times darker 
when viewed from an elevation than it appears to 
those inhabiting the lower regions of the earth [note 
the aeronaut's superiority !] seemed almost black with 
the intensity of night." In these circumstances they 



THE GUIDE-ROPE IN USE. 



35 



found the guide-rope invaluable, as it warned them 
when they were nearing hills. When travelling at 
a good height, over fairly even ground, the rope hangs 
at an acute angle from the car, but when the ground 
is rising the rope begins to drag behind and thus to 
warn the aeronauts that a handful of ballast thrown 




' GREAT NASSAU PASSING OVER COBLENTZ. 

{From a sketch by Moitck Mason.) 

out may lift them over some higher land which they 
are approaching. 

" In one of these latter movements," says Mason, 
''which took place at about a quarter past six (a.m.), 
the balloon, having nearly recovered its highest 
elevation, suddenly brought us in full view of the 



36 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

sun, and for the first time gladdened us with the 
assurance of a speedy return of day. Powerful, 
indeed, must be the pen which could hope to do 
justice to a scene Hke that which here presented itself 
to our view. The enormous extent of the prospect — 
the boundless variety it embraced — the unequalled 
grandeur of the objects it displayed — the singular 
novelty of the manner under which they were beheld 
— and the striking contrast they afforded to that 
situation and those scenes to which we had so long 
and so lately been confined, are effects and circum- 
stances which no description is capable of representing 
in the light in which they ought to be placed, in order 
to be duly appreciated." 

Finally, their descent took place in the most suc- 
cessful manner near the town of Weilburg in the 
Duchy of Nassau at half-past seven o'clock in the 
morning. They could easily have continued their 
journey for many miles, but had arranged not to 
get too far away from Paris, whither the balloon, 
now christened the '' Great Nassau," had to be 
sent for exhibition purposes. In eighteen hours 
the balloon had carried the travellers across more 
than 500 miles of land and sea. It took ''six long 
days and longer nights" to cart it to Paris. 

The voyage still ranks as one of the most ambitious 
exploits in ballooning; but was subsequently excelled 
by the aerial voyage of two Americans, Wise and 
La Fontaine, who are credited with having travelled 
1,150 miles in less than twenty hours. 

Charles Green died in 1870 at the ripe old age of 
eighty-five, having long lived in retirement. From 





\ 



\ 



THE "GREAT NASSAU" BALLOON. 
{.Fro jn a sketch by one of the voyagers, Robert Hollond, M.P.) 



38 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

1 82 1 to 1857 he made no fewer than fourteen hundred 
ascents, thrice crossed the sea, and twice fell into it. 
As already recorded, his great services to aeronautics 
were the invention of the guide-rope and the discovery 
that carburetted gas could be used for inflation. 

Many instances could be given of the great value of 
the guide-rope. One will suffice. When VV. de Fon- 
vielle, the celebrated French balloonist, was making 
an involuntary descent over Paris, in the famous 
and unwieldy " Giant," falling through the air at a 
frightful speed, the guide-rope arrested the descent, 
and by breaking the force of the downward rush 
saved the balloon and its occupants from disaster. 

M. de Fonvielle comments on the episode thus : 
" In less than one minute we travelled along a vertical 
line a distance of 1,300 feet. As the air could no 
longer bear our weight, the brave ^ Giant ' had ex- 
tended itself and formed a kind of parachute. . . . 
A weight of some 7,000 or 8,000 pounds avoirdupois 
had thus fallen to the earth w^ith the speed of an 
ordinary railway train, and without any accident 
that would be remembered three days afterwards, 
and all this thanks to the guide-rope." 

The next most daring aerial voyage was accom- 
plished by a Frenchman named Arban, who in the 
early part of 1846 crossed the Alps in a balloon. The 
journey was an exciting one, as the weather turned 
out rough, and he found himself looking down on the 
virgin peaks of the Mont Blanc range in the middle 
of a stormy night, the moon shining brightly at 
intervals and lighting up the strange w^eird scene, 
such as no mortal eye had ever before witnessed. 



HENRY TRACEY COXWELL. 39 

He landed near Turin and was the object of a great 
ovation. Like Zambeccari, he also had a terrifying 
experience in the Mediterranean and was saved, 
only to meet, a few years later, an unseen fate in 
the waters of that sunny sea. 

If our purpose were merely to record balloon ad- 
ventures there would be no lack of material for a 
much bulkier volume than the present, but the fact 
that we aim at chronicling only a few of the most 
notable voyages precludes mention of many exciting 
episodes, such as the remarkable escapes from death 
experienced by Green, Coxwell, and a score of 
others ; so we pass now to the next most noteworthy 
achievement in ballooning, namely, the highest ascent 
ever accomplished. This was attained by H. T* 
Coxwell and James Glaisher on September 5th, 
1862. It was one of a series of eight ascents — 
and the most important of the series — made by 
Glaisher on behalf of the British Association. 

As both men are famous in the roll of British 
aeronauts a word or two concerning them may be 
given here. Henry Tracey Coxwell was born in 1819 
at the Parsonage House, Wouldham, near Rochester 
Castle, being a grandson of the Rev. Charles Coxwell, 
D.L. for Gloucestershire, and his father was Com- 
mander Joseph Coxwell, R.N., who placed his son for 
education at the Military School, Chatham. In early 
life he became an enthusiastic amateur balloonist, 
and one of his earliest ascents — if not the earliest 
— was from the White Conduit Gardens, North 
London, in 1844. ^^ ^h^ following year he projected 
and edited Tlie Aerostatic Magazine, and after- 



40 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

wards made numerous ascents with Hampton, 
Gypson, Albert Smith, Lieutenant Gale, and others. 
In 1848 he commenced as a professional aeronaut, 
and began his first campaign by a series of ascents 
on the Continent, starting at Brussels with a typical 
war balloon he had constructed. He afterwards 
made many ascents in our own country. His last 
public ascent was made in 1885 at York, from 
which city he had ascended for twenty-eight years 
consecutively. 

James Glaisher was a Fellow of the Royal Society, 
a scientist of high repute, and at one time President 
of the Aeronautical Society. At the time of those 
ascents in 1862 he was Superintendent of the Meteoro- 
logical Department in Greenwich Observatory, with 
which branch of service he was connected from 1840 
to 1874, a period of thirty-four years. 

Coxwell was the aeronaut and Glaisher the scientist 
of these ascents, the character of which brings them, 
with this one exception, into consideration for our 
next chapter rather than the present. The ascent 
of September 5th, was the second from Wolver- 
hampton and commenced shortly after one o'clock. 
In about half an hour the balloon had risen to a 
height of four miles, and when they had gained 
an altitude of five miles Glaisher began to be affected 
by the atmosphere, or, rather, the scarcity of it. 

He could no longer 1 ad his scientific instruments ; 
he endeavoured to lift his right arm, it was powerless. 
So was his left. He could shake his body, but his 
arms remained useless. Presently he fell back w^th 
his head resting on the edge of the car. '' I dimly 



SEVEN MILES HIGH. 



41 



saw ]\Ir. Coxwell/' he writes, ''and tried to speak, but 
could not. In an instant, intense darkness overcame 
me ; but I was still conscious, with as active a brain 
as at the present moment while writing this." Soon, 
however, he became quite unconscious. 

When Glaisher was falling into this condition. 




MESSRS. GLAISHER AND COXWELL S DESCENC. 

Coxwell had clambered into the hoop in order to 
reach the neck of the balloon, which had become en- 
crusted with hoar frost owing to the intense cold. 
When the aeronaut returned to the car he found 
that his hands were frozen. Seeing the plight of 
his companion he made to examine him, only to find 
that he himself was powerless and rapidly losing 



42 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

consciousness. Alert to their great peril, he seized 
the valve-line with his teeth, and tugged at it until 
the balloon began to descend. Glaisher gradually 
recovered, and resumed his note-taking as if nothing 
had happened. He was able to prove from his 
instruments that they had ascended to a height of 
nearly 37,000 feet, or more than seven miles, in 
less than an hour. Mr. Stanley Spencer, a well- 
known living aeronaut, has asserted that his ascent 
from the Crystal Palace on September 15th, 1898, 
was a " record," despite the fact that he only claims 
to have risen to 27,000 feet, whereas Glaisher had 
recorded 29,000 before he became insensible, and at 
that time the balloon was still rising. 

Nine years later Gaston Tissandier and two other 
French scientists were less fortunate in attempting a 
high ascent. Tissandier escaped, but his companions 
died from the effects of the rarefied atmosphere in 
the unrecorded region to which they rose. 

Glaisher was so occupied with his scientific observa- 
tions that he seldom recorded his impressions of the 
voyage from the popular point of view, but this de- 
scription of his passage over London on the night 
of October 2nd, 1865, is worthy of quotation: 

" Almost immediately under, but a little to the 
south-east, was Woolwich ; north, was Blackwall ; 
south, Greenwich and Deptford ; and west, as far as 
the eye could reach, was London — the whole forming 
a starry spectacle of such brilliancy as far to exceed 
anything I ever saw. When I have been at this 
elevation in the evening, at a distance from London, 
it has had the appearance of a vast conflagration, but 



OVER LONDON AT NIGHT. 43 

on this night the air was so clear and free from 
haze, that each and every light was distinct, and they 
seemed all but touching each other. 

^' On leaving Charing Cross I looked back over 
London, the model of which could be seen and traced 
— its squares by their lights ; the river, which looked 
dark and dull, by the double row of lights on every 
bridge spanning it. Looking round, two of the illu- 
minated dials of Westminster clock were like two 
dull moons. Again, looking westward, the whole lines 
of the Commercial and the Whitechapel Roads, with 
their continuations through Holborn to Oxford Street, 
were visible and most brilliant and remarkable. We 
were at such a distance from the Commercial Road 
that it appeared like a line of brilliant fire, assuming 
a more imposing appearance when the line separated 
in two, and became most imposing just under us in 
Oxford Street. Here the two thickly studded rows 
of brilliant lights were seen on either side of the 
street with a narrow dark space between, and this 
dark space was bounded, as it wxre, on both sides 
by a bright fringe, like frosted silver. At first I could 
not account for this appearance ; but presently, at 
one point more brilliant than the rest, persons were 
seen passing, their shadows being thrown on the 
pavement, and at once it was evident this rich effect 
was caused by the brilliant illumination of the shop- 
Hghts on the pavements. 

'* I feel it impossible to convey any adequate idea 
of the brilliant effect of London, viewed at an eleva- 
tion of 1,300 feet, on a clear night, when the air is 
free from mist. 



44 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

"It seemed to me to realise a wish I have felt 
when looking through a telescope at portions of the 
Milky Way, when the field of view appeared covered 
with gold-dust, to be possessed of the power to see 
those minute spots of light as brilliant stars ; for 
certainly the intense brilliancy of London this night 
must have rivalled such a view." * 

A sensational ascent was that from Calais, in July, 
1873, by Jules Durnot, who started with his wife 
in most unpropitious weather to cross the channel. 
They were carried out into the North Sea, where, 
late at night and after the most exciting adventures, 
they were rescued by a Grimsby fishing-boat. 

Another exciting experience befell Gaston Beaugon, 
who, in a balloon named the Jupiter, and accom- 
panied by two friends, was carried out to sea from 
Havre some years ago, and, after a terrible night, 
had the good fortune to be rescued by a German 
vessel. The balloon made its way to England, where 
the weight of snow and ice which it had accumulated 
brought it to earth. 

Among the stories of balloon adventures the travels 
of the late Colonel Frank Burnaby deserve some 
mention. He was a member of the Aeronautical 
Society, and made his first ascent in 1864, with a 
French aeronaut named Goddard, and later had a 
very exciting experience with a deluded country- 
man of Goddard's, who thought he had invented 
machinery for making his balloon ascend into the skies. 
Burnaby's great feat, however, was that of crossing 
the channel in a balloon which he piloted alone. 
* Travels in the Air. Edited by J, Glaisher, London: Bentley, 



CHAPTER III. 

Achievements of Recent and Living Balloonists — Flammarion, 
Tissandier, and de Fonvielle — Andree, the Adriatic, and the 
North Pole — Rev. J. M. Bacon, Perceval and Stanley 
Spencer, Count de la Vaulx, etc. — The latest Channel 
Passage. 

We come now to the achievements of recent and 
living aeronauts, and among these the names of 
Camille Flammarion, the celebrated French astro- 
nomer, Gaston Tissandier, who, in 1883, was thought to 
have partially solved the problem of steering a balloon, 
and W. de Fonvielle are most distinguished. The 
exploits of Senor Santos-Dumont are left for more 
particular treatment further on. As with Glaisher, the 
impulse of the three famous Frenchmen just named 
was mainly scientific, but they have all come under 
the fascination of a pursuit which is perhaps the 
most romantic left to man. 

M. Flammarion expresses his feelings in this im- 
passioned address to his balloon as it lay formless 
in its shed before inflation : 

" Inert and formless thing, that I can now trample 
under my feet, that I can tear with my hands, 
here stretched dead upon the ground, my perfect 
slave, I am about to give thee life that thou 
may est become my sovereign. In the height of 

45 



46 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

my generosity I shall make thee even greater 
than myself. O vile and powerless thing ! I shall 
abandon myself to thy majesty, O creature of my 
own hands ! and thou shalt carry me beyond my 
kingdom into thy own element, which I have created 
for thee ; thou shalt fly off to the regions of storms 
and tempests, and 1 shall be forced to follow thee. 
I shall become thy plaything ; thou shalt do what 
thou wilt with me, and forget that I gave thee life. . . . 
Perchance thou wilt deprive me of my existence 
and leave my corpse floating in the hurricane above, 
until thy perfidy, fatigued by its own exertions, shall 
fall like a blind monster in some desert place, or 
into the foaming waves, which shall swallow us up 
together ! '' 

The name of S. A. Andree, the Swedish engineer, 
is famous for his attempt to reach the North Pole by 
means of a balloon. But had he never gone to seek 
death or glory in the frozen north, he would have 
been entitled to our notice for his w^onderful aerial 
voyage across the Baltic Sea in October of 1893. He 
had ascended for purely scientific purposes on the 
19th of that month, and in making his descent found 
to his horror that he had drifted out to sea, where 
his fate was certain unless he could reach Finland 
or fall in with a vessel. He did sight a steamer, 
but the captain, afraid of an explosion if the balloon 
came near his fiery funnels, put out all fires, and so 
could not move to Andree's assistance. In this 
critical condition the aeronaut maintained perfect 
possession of himself, and now determined on reaching 
Finland. 



ANDREE AND HIS BALLOON. 47 

The wind greatly increased, the balloon sailing on 
at eighteen miles an hour, often dipping towards 
the water, but never touching it. To prevent that 
danger, Andree cut away the anchor which he had 
been unable to raise — a desperate expedient. At 
dusk he was flying over the cliffs of Finland, but 
the wind changing, blew him along the coast. The 
remainder of his extraordinary voyage is best told 
in his own words : 

'^ For ninety minutes I was standing on the edge 
of the car, with some ballast in my hands, ready to 
throw it out in case of danger of collision with a 
cliff. Suddenly I saw a sharp light. I supposed 
it was a lighthouse ; but there appeared now two, 
then three lights ; it was evidently a building. For 
one moment I lost my presence of mind and failed 
to grapple the rope to the ventilator and hang on 
to it with all my powers. Now it was too late. I 
had passed the island, and the balloon came down 
into the water. I was lying in the bottom of the 
car, and the water rushed in with such force that 
I could not move. Most of the way to the next 
island I was under water. 

^* But this could not continue. At length, after 
much turning and twisting, I succeeded in getting 
my legs over the edge of the car, just when the 
balloon swept over the next cliff. It was a wonder 
I escaped without having them broken. I tried 
several positions, but the car was so unsteady that 
I was never safe ; but I could not endure it much 
longer. I felt myself so feeble that it would have 
been an impossibility for me to try to hold the 



48 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

balloon. I had only one course now to pursue — 
to save my life. Passing over the next cliff, I 
jumped down. The balloon shot up in the air and 
disappeared. 

*' I was saved ; but, alas ! in what condition and 
for how long a time ! I had hurt my leg in falling, 
and could not stand, so I crept round the cliff in 
search of shelter ; but none was to be found. It 
was now between seven and eight o'clock. For a 
couple of hours I shouted aloud, in the hope that 
I might be heard by some passing boat ; but the 
raging storm took away the sound of my voice. 

" I then turned my attention to making myself 
as comfortable as possible for the night, though the 
prospects were anything but pleasant. I was wet 
through, my fur cap had blown away, and I had 
nothing to put on my head. This made me specially 
anxious, because my only chance of being rescued 
was to keep my head clear. I made a cap of some 
handkerchiefs and lay down on the cold ground, 
hungry and shivering, trying to keep up my courage 
if not my temperature. So passed the long night. 

" At length day dawned. I was now able to stand, 
and, with my glasses, which I had fortunately round 
my neck, I saw in the distance the island over which 
I had passed the night before. In order to draw 
attention to my position, I took off my trousers 
and waved them in the air. Shortly afterwards 
I was glad to see a boat sail out from the island 
and steer straight for the place where I lay. 

" I soon saw they had not set out in response 
to my signal, for the men never once looked in the 



A PERILOUS ADVENTURE. 49 

direction of the cliff, and the boat passed me. 1 
shouted myself hoarse ; but in vain. I began to 
look about to see if I could make a raft out of 
the few trees there were ; but as 1 had neither axe 
nor knife, I was obliged to give up the idea. 

" When I returned to my sleeping-place, I found 
a boat close by. A man on the island had seen a 
big square boat, with an enormous sail, come sailing 
from the sea with a terrific sweep, and go flying 
over the ground, and again disappear in the sea. 
This was my balloon, or, rather, his description of 
it, for the islanders had never seen anything of the 
kind before. 

" His curiosity was aroused, and early in the 
morning he went down to the beach with his glasses 
to see if he could find out what the strange apparition 
could have been. He then saw my signals and 
put off to my rescue. I was quickly taken over to 
his home and well cared for." 

But, as w^e have said, it is his attempt to make 
an aerial voyage to the North Pole that has rendered 
his name a familiar one throughout the world. 
His balloon was called the " Eagle," and resemibled 
the ordinary aerostat, save that it also carried a sail ; 
and the car, made to accommodate three persons, had 
a comfortable sleeping apartment, the roof of which 
served as a deck. Danskoe, in Spitzbergen, was the 
place selected to start from. The balloon was in- 
flated there on July 23rd, 1896, but two months 
passed, the winter came, and the adventurers had 
waited in vain for a favourable wind. On July nth, 
1897, Andree and one companion, Strindberg, re- 

4 



50 



THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 



turned to Danskoe, and soon were favoured by a 
south wind, borne by which the "Eagle'' sailed away 
into the unknown. 




THE " EAGLE," IN WHICH ANDREE SET OUT FOR THE NORTH POLE. 

It was a strange, bold scheme, and by no means 
so mad as some people thought. But nearly five 
years have passed and the voyagers have never 



LIVING BRITISH BALLOONISTS. 5 1 

returned, though countless reports about them, never 
quite authenticated, have been circulated from time 
to time, the latest coming from Kanakee, Illinois, 
to which town, it was stated, two citizens had returned 
late in the autumn of 1901, from a tour in the 
Hudson Bay territory, and according to a report 
alleged to have been made by these gentlemen, 
certain Indians in the spring of the previous year 
found the bodies of two white men and the basket of 
a balloon at a spot 900 miles north of the Moose 
River. The description of one of the bodies given to 
the Illinois tourists by the Indians tallied with that 
of Andree. 

Of contemporary English balloonists the Rev. J. 
M. Bacon and Messrs. Stanley and Perceval Spencer 
bear the best-known names, and each has had many 
interesting experiences. They are, of course, devotees 
of the old art of ballooning as distinct from the 
modern attempts to perfect the airship. Mr. Bacon, 
who has been felicitously described as '^ a real 
sky pilot," has been engaged in aerial experiments 
for upwards of fifteen years, and has described 
in his interesting little book. By Land and Sky, 
many of his adventures, in which his daughter. 
Miss Gertrude Bacon, has occasionally been a 
participator. 

Mr. Bacon has made frequent night ascents, and has 
enjoyed several times that rare spectacle which gas-lit 
London presents to the aeronaut who floats above 
it in the blue night ; even having had the temerity 
to explode some bombs w^hen passing over Trafalgar 
Square last year ! It is interesting to note, by the 



52 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR 

way, that, according to Mr. Bacon's experience, a 
cartridge suspended 120 feet below the car of a balloon 
and exploded by electricity is followed by a report 
no louder than a pistol shot to the ear of those in 
the car ; but presently this is succeeded by a terrific 
noise, caused by the earth returning the sound into 
the air. 

Mr. Bacon, as we have had occasion to remark 
before, has not practised ballooning merely for the 
sake of adventure, but has carried out many useful 
experiments relating to certain departments of 
scientific research, with which for the present we 
are not concerned. But we must mention at least 
the results of one of his most recent voyages, from 
Fulham across London to Ashford, lasting three 
hours — from 3 till 6 a.m. — on August i6th, 1901. 
This was, for various reasons, an important little 
journey. In the first place the ascent commenced 
after pilot balloons had been floated for the purpose 
of indicating the direction of the air-currents, and 
Mr. Bacon found no difficulty in conversing with 
many people in the streets by means of the ingenious 
acoustic instruments which he has invented. He 
also succeeded in conveying messages to telegraph 
operators by using a huge black collapsing drum, 
which, by contraction and expansion, was made to 
indicate the dots and dashes of the Morse code. All 
his experiments were most successful. 

One of the most interesting of Mr. Bacon^s journeys 
is thus described by Mr. Swinbourne, who accom- 
panied him : 

** At half-past nine to the moment, with a hearty 



A MOONLIGHT VOYAGE. 53 

cheer fi'om tlie little crowd of onlookers, the balloon 
was freed, and in a minute or so we were at a 
height of 650 feet, and finding ourselves, curiously 
enough, considerably warmer than we had been on 
terra finna. Away behind us lay London, lanes 
and lanes of sparkling light ; but to make out special 
localities was not easy, although we could readily 
distinguish the flash-light of the Belvedere Tower 
at Earl's Court Exhibition. At 1,000 feet high we 
were over some suburban railway station, and the 
sight of a train rushing along a curved cutting was 
not one to be forgotten. It was like a comet, with 
a fiery gold head and a silver tail. The moonlight 
on the trail of smoke made it look like the rapids 
of a river in moonlight — a rushing mass of silver 
water. The engine was a glow of fiery red — you 
saw no train. At 2,000 feet it was marvellous to 
note the clear-cut shadow of the balloon which the 
moon gave. As we threw out sand, its shadow- 
could be seen dropping from the balloon, first in a 
broad stream, then, as it disintegrated and the 
particles separated, widening into a nebulous shade, 
to disappear altogether as it dropped earthwards 
Mr. Bacon and Mr. Perceval Spencer both assured 
me that the balloon's shadow thrown was far more 
distinct and sharply defined than during voyages by 
day. The night, in truth, was a perfect one, and 
until then I had never known what moonlight could 
be. Every roadway, hedge, and rivulet stood out 
as clear as if we were looking down on a huge scale 
map. xAt 2,500 feet we were moving very slowly, 
passing at the moment one of the most striking of 



54 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

the many picturesque effects the night afforded us, 
as we crossed the Medway right over the Pottery 
Works at Aylesford. The blazing furnaces gleaming 
below, encircled by the tortuous silvery winding of 
the river, offered a superb coup d'oeil under the 
moonlight." 

But the most remarkable of all Mr. Bacon's aerial 
voyages was that which he undertook some years ago, 
when all England was looking for the November 
leonides which never arrived. Accompanied by his 
daughter and Mr. Stanley Spencer, Mr, Bacon started 
from Newbury at four o'clock on a raw November 
morning, in the hope of seeing the leonides on their 
native heath, so to speak. If their quest after the 
errant meteorites was unsuccessful, they at least suc- 
ceeded in finding abundance of adventure, for the 
ascent proved one of the most memorable in Mr. 
Bacon's experience. 

To understand what follows it is necessary to 
explain that the balloon was a hermetically sealed 
one, this being necessary to prevent loss of gas, as 
they desired to remain in a high position for many 
hours. There was an arrangement for ripping the 
cover when ready to descend, but as Mr. Bacon 
wished to rise to a good height they were soon far 
above the clouds, and many hours passed without a 
peep of the earth beneath. Up there in the cloud 
world they floated about amid chilly vapours, and when 
the dawn brought with it the rays of the sun, these 
were found to be almost unbearably hot. For hours 
the balloon travelled on, and its occupants could form 
no idea of their locality owing to the fantastic tricks 



A NARROW ESCAPE. 55 

of the clouds, but a little before noon the shriek of 
an engine, and the rumbling noise of many trains, 
suggested they were over some important railway 
centre, while the sound of hammers indicated a busy 
hive of industry. Mr. Bacon concluded from these 
signs that they were being carried over the city of 
Bristol, and the fear of a possible disaster in the 
waters of the Atlantic at once rose up before him. 
Still they could not risk ripping the balloon, as they 
could see nothing beneath them but cloud. 

At this juncture Miss Bacon conceived the idea 
of sending some messages down to earth telling of 
their danger. Three dozen telegraph forms were 
hastily written and thrown out : " URGENT — Large 
balloon from Newbury travelling overhead above the 
clouds. Cannot descend. Telegraph to sea (Coast 
Guards) to be ready to rescue." Only one of these 
missives was subsequently traced in its flight from 
the balloon. It was found on a mountain side near 
Pontypridd and must have occupied nearly two 
hours in falling. 

An opening in the cloud floor showed land 
beneath, and they immediately ripped the balloon and 
commenced their descent. A gusty wind driving 
through the valley into which they were descending 
made the operation no easy matter, and the three 
aeronauts were all very much bruised. Miss Bacon 
having an arm broken by the shock of their impact 
with Mother Earth. They had landed near Neath, 
only a mile and a half from the Atlantic, into which 
they would certainly have drifted but for the lucky rift 
in the clouds. The voyage had occupied ten hours, 



56 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR 

and by virtue of that fact established a " record " 
in British ballooning. 

Mr. Stanley Spencer has made many ascents from 
the Crystal Palace and is a member of the well- 
known firm of balloon specialists, but he has never 
had so notable an exploit to recount as that which 
comes within the experience of another member of the 
same family — Mr. Perceval Spencer. The Spencers, 
by the way, are descended by marriage from 
the famous Charles Green, the father of modern 
ballooning. 

Some years ago Mr. Perceval Spencer had arranged 
to make a balloon ascent from Calcutta and to come 
down in a parachute. About two thousand people had 
turned out to witness the performance of the young 
aeronaut. Lord Lansdowne and many prominent 
government officials were present, to say nothing 
of native princes and their retainers. The ascent 
was to be made with a simple balloon without a car, 
the parachute being so attached to it that it could 
be easily freed for the descent. To the chagrin of 
the aeronaut it was found that the balloon had not 
sufficient lifting power. Some days previously an 
enormous crowd had assembled to witness him ascend, 
and a hitch having then occurred the performance 
had been postponed. The prospect of a second 
postponement was again before Mr. Spencer, and 
he determined 'that the crowd should not be dis- 
appointed again. 

Greatly daring, he had put his quickly formed 
resolution into act before any one had realised what 
he was after. The balloon sprang upward with the 



PERCEVAL spencer's DARING EXPLOIT. 57 

aeronaut sitting on the sling rope, and absolutely 
lacking every item of apparatus usually considered 
indispensable for the most ordinary ascent. His 
parachute was left lying on the ground. 

The sequel is told in the words of a recent writer 
in Pearsons Magazine on *^ Skippers of the Sky " : 
" The crowd simply gasped in amazement and horror, 
as, with strained vision, they watched the ball, now 
dwindled to a child's plaything, with what looked 
like a tiny insect suspended beneath it. Away it 
went, till at last it melted into the blue haze, and 
was lost to vision. No one expected ever to see 
Mr. Spencer again. He was regarded as good as 
dead, a victim to his own rashness, which all con- 
demned, though they could not but admire. 

" Three days passed, but without tidings of the 
unhappy balloonist. Not the slightest doubt was 
entertained of his death, only the probable manner 
of it was subject for endless conversation and news- 
paper paragraphs. Then the Press proceeded to de- 
cently inter him, with columns of mournful obituaries. 
The last swan-song was sung over the fate of the 
gallant and infatuated young Englishman, and the 
matter was regarded as closed, when lo ! on the third 
day Mr. Spencer returned to Calcutta as if from 
an ordinary Saturday - to - Monday vacation, and 
wanted to know what all the fuss was about. 

" His adventures read like a chapter out of Sinbad 
the Sailor, His flight from Calcutta had continued 
for several hours, during which time he covered a 
distance of some forty miles. Like an uncanny bird, 
he flew over jungle and plain until, literally wearing 



58 THE CONQUEST OF THE AHl. 

out the strength of his aerial steed (to change the 
metaphor), he alighted, to the dismay and astonish- 
ment of the natives, on one of the islands formed 
by the delta of the Ganges. Of course, he might 
just as easily have fallen into the Ganges itself, 
and become food for the crocodiles. Being without 
a valve, his balloon might have risen beyond the 
point that respiration is possible. But none of these 
things happened." 

The latest passage across the channel, like the 
first of all, was accomplished by a Frenchman, M. 
George Latruffe, at the end of November, 1901 ; 
ascending from Dunkirk at 1.45 and landing at 
Southminster at eight o'clock the same evening. 
M. Latruffe thus describes his experience : 

" I made the ascent at the conclusion of the 
festivities in honour of the Czar, intending to reach 
Dover about five o'clock. The weather was ex- 
tremely favourable, and a brisk breeze blew in the 
right direction. I had a beautiful send-off. For some 
miles I kept in a direct line for Dover. Suddenly the 
wind veered round and I was carried further north, 
and I soon knew that I should not reach my objective. 
I passed near Margate just as it was getting dusk, 
and I had hopes of being able to land somewhere 
there, but the wind took me out to sea, and for 
a long while the course was zigzag. 

*^ At one time the balloon descended so near the 
water that I was able to speak to a passing steamer, 
but apparently no one on board could speak French, 
and so I could not get any reply. Later, I got 
within speaking distance of another vessel. By 



THE LATEST CHANNEL PASSAGE. 59 

this time it was quite dark. * Where am I ? ' I 
shouted. Just then my balloon suddenly ascended, 
and the only words I could hear in reply to my ques- 
tion were, ' Vous etes trois ' (' You are three '), 

the remainder of the w^ords being quite lost in space. 

" I drifted on and on further north, and at length 
came to a large town showing many brilliant lights. 
I think it was Clacton or Brightlingsea. x^s I passed 
near the coast I blew a whistle several times and 
listened for a response, but none came, and all was 
quite still. I was very hopeful of effecting a speedy 
landing, when I was startled to find that my balloon 
was being blown right out to sea again. Of course, 
I recognised the danger, and fastened a life-belt round 
my waist, lighted a cigarette, and sat back in the car 
waiting anxiously and patiently for a favourable turn 
of the wind. It soon came. The course described 
from this point was almost a big circle, which 
eventually brought me off the Essex coast. 

*' Then I sailed over Foulness Point and across four 
miles of marsh-land, and, looking through my glasses, 
I saw a favourable place to descend. I dropped the 
grappling iron, which tore slices off the top of three 
hay-stacks and then held firmly in an oak-tree. The 
balloon came gently to the ground, and I jumped on 
to firm soil minus my hat and a medal, both of which 
were lost in the sea. Three residents kindly came to 
my assistance, and we packed up the balloon and 
went to the hotel. 

" What a sensation I caused in the village! Just 
think. I could not speak a word of English. I looked 
like — I do not know what I looked like! I was 



60 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

dripping with perspiration, I was bareheaded, and I 
had a Hfe-belt round me, and I had to walk like this 
amid a throng of astonished villagers. They must 
have exclaimed, ' He is mad.' But they all treated 
me very kindly, and even went to the extent of 
searching for people who could speak French. Three 
came forward, but, alas ! I could not understand one 
of them. I must learn English." 

This admirable little voyage attracted not one tithe 
of the attention aroused in the preceding month by 
Count de la Vaulx's attempt to cross the Mediter- 
ranean in a balloon. The Count de la Vaulx is the 
young aeronaut who, in 1900, made the first balloon 
voyage from Paris to Russia.* His Mediterranean 
exploit was an important one in many ways, having 
for its object the testing of a new device called the 
deviator, and to experiment with wireless telegraphy. 
It was also hoped to prove the feasibility of com- 
municating with Tunis or Algeria in case of a blockade 
of these ports. The balloon was spherical in shape, 
holding 3,000 cubic metres of hydrogen gas, but having 
inside a small balloon filled with air. 

The most important features of ** La Mediter- 
raneen," as the balloon is called, are the stabilisateurs 
and deviators. These inventions are thus described : 

" Vertical stability is the life of a balloon ; continual 
mounting and descending means continual loss of 
both gas and ballast. The stabilisateurs are heavy 
flexible cables. Their chief characteristic is their 
high degree of tautness, which comes from their con- 
siderable weight in relation to the metre of distance 
* See Chapter IV. 



THE USE OF THE DEVIATORS. 6l 

to be passed over, and also their slight resistance 
to the forward movement. Such an apparatus, ac- 
cording to its greater or less immersion in the sea, 
ballasts or unballasts the balloon, whose basket is 
thus kept from contact with the waves, floating above 
them at the same distance in spite of gusts. On the 
other hand, the great power of the apparatus permits 
the balloonist, when he wishes, to correct, by 
automatic variation of the cables' immersion, all 
vertical unbalancing. The deviators are veritable 
instruments for partially directing the course of the 
balloon. The Herve deviator is form^ed by a series 
of parallel concave plates, fixed two by two by rigid 
steel plates in such a way that the whole series can 
be bent by a simple movement. The deviator is 
connected with the balloon by two steerage cords. 
As long as these two cords are of the same length, 
there is no change in the direction, and the apparatus 
acts like a strong floating anchor. But if one of 
the cords is shortened, the plates of the deviator 
turn obliquely, and the whole series rapidly changes 
position and tows the balloon to right or left. This 
latter apparatus permits a change of direction to 
any point situated under the wind within sixty-five 
or seventy degrees to right or left of the balloon's 
direction at the moment. It is, after all, nothing 
very difi^erent from a ship's steering gear applied to 
a balloon that hangs over the water. Like the 
stabihsateiir, it presupposes that the balloon shall 
not soar into the higher air, but float comparatively 
close to the surface of the sea. This is another 
novelty of the new ballooning, whose ideal it is to 



62 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

^o plane-ing along great stretches of distance, without 
loss of gas or ballast. There is always time to dart 
into the upper air when occasion requires it." 

At midnight on Saturday, October 12th, the much- 
talked-of voyage commenced. On leaving Les 
Sablettes, near Toulon, the " Mediterraneen " met an 
easterly wind that carried her out of her course, which 
was a southerly one. The breeze was gentle, and 
the Du Cliayla (a cruiser which had been sent to 
render assistance in case of need) easily kept pace. 

On Sunday the mail steamer from Algiers ex- 
changed signals with Count de la Vaulx, then fifty 
miles from Marseilles, when he reported " all well " ; 
but the next night, when about ten miles to the east 
of the St. Laurent Lighthouse, near the Pyrenees, 
the count made up his mind that there would be 
no change of wind, and that he must give up his 
attempted trip to Algiers. He signalled to the Du 
Chayla, and alighted safely on her deck, the balloon 
being stowed away on the forecastle. 

The whole journey had lasted forty-one hours 
without any hitch, and on returning to Toulon the 
count made the following statement : 

" Although we have not attained the object of our 
journey we can express satisfaction w^ith our experi- 
ment, which has given excellent results, and has per- 
mitted us to ascertain that, owing to the Herve 
apparatus, it is possible to remain in a balloon over 
the sea for several days, and we fully intend to re- 
commence our experiments some day or other with 
a still more perfect apparatus." 

So ended the latest attempt to accomplish a long 



TO CROSS THE ATLANTIC ! 63 

voyage in an aerostat. But it is the glory of 
ballooning that failures only spur on to renewed 
efforts ; and with M. Gcddard, the famous Paris 
balloon-maker, at work on a great balloon of 11,000 
metres in which he means to attempt the crossing 
of the Atlantic, and Mr. wSamuel A. King, a well- 
known American balloonist, promising, with much 
confidence, a similar attempt from the other side, 
it is evident we are at the beginning of a new and 
wonderful era in the history of aerial travel. 



CHAPTER IV. 

A Race through the Clouds — Long-Distance Records— From 
Paris to Russia — Count de la Vaulx's Famous Victory. 

We have purposely omitted from our preceding 
chapter all mention of the great balloon race from 
the Paris Exposition of 1900, as it seems to us that 
the story of that unique event is deserving of a 
chapter to itself. Since the earliest days of the 
world's history races of all kinds have had a strange 
attraction for man. The Romans had their chariot 
races, and we know, to our national sorrow, that 
we have our horse races. But surely a balloon 
race must be regarded as an exception to Solomon's 
rule. It may be asserted, with some confidence, that 
never before had such an event taken place. Think 
of the audacity of the idea ! A race through the 
clouds ! Even the struggle for the America cup 
lacks excitement compared with that. 

This great aerial contest took place at the beginning 
of October, 1900, and was regarded as the most 
remarkable feature of the exposition. Many notable 
French aeronauts entered for the prizes that were 
offered, and the conditions of the race debarred all 
forms of aerostats other than the ordinary balloon 
from competing. Although the rules and regulations, 

64 



AT THE PARIS EXPOSITION. 65 

With characteristic French volubility, filled fifty-eight 
pages of small type, the conditions were simplicity 
itself. There was to be no handicapping, each 
competitor was free to use a balloon of any shape 
or size, to carry as much ballast as he cared for, 
to avail himself of as many fads as he fancied, and 
to make use either of hydrogen gas or the ordinary 
carburetted kind, according to the length of his purse. 
These conditions were liberal enough to produce 
the best and most interesting results. 

There had been a number of preliminary races 
of a trial nature, but the two principal events were 
fixed for September 30th and October 9th. The 
former date was a Sunday, and on the Vincennes 
Field many thousands of Parisians had turned out 
to enjoy the novel spectacle — novel even in that 
godless city of sensations. The scene was a curious 
one, touched at first with some degree of dulness, 
for there is nothing very exhilarating in watching 
a dozen shapeless masses of canvas and silk lying 
on the ground, and slowly distending as the gas 
is introduced into them. But gradually, as the 
balloons begin to take shape before the eyes of 
the spectators, interest awakens, and the jaunty 
aeronauts who move about superintending their 
flimsy crafts become objects of much curiosity. 
These are the men who are going to brave unknown 
dangers in the skies, and your Parisian is ever full 
of admiration for those who seem to be doing some- 
thing suggestive of heroism. 

The baskets are now being attached to the sway- 
ing balloons ; ballast, scientific instruments, food — no 

5 



66 THE CONQUEST OE THE AIR. 

Frenchman is ever wanting there — are placed in the 
cars, and presently the dauntless competitors them- 
selves are seen gracefully bestowing themselves inside 
the wicker-work, each as conscious of his dignity and 
his great role on the world's stage as if he were 
Napoleon himself. The aeronaut examines all the 
arrangements, counts his bags of ballast, is satisfied 
that all is well. The official judges, oozing import- 
ance and authority at every pore, are present. The 
moment for which the good-humoured crowd has 
waited so patiently is at hand. Workmen skilfully 
detach the sand-bags which are weighting the balloon 
to earth, the mooring rope is severed at a slash, and 
a mighty cheer bursts from the crowd as the first 
aerostat bounds upward into space, catches a breeze 
blowing north-east, and speedily disappears from view, 
dragging its tiny car beneath it. 

It is the " Conte " that has just set off, and the two 
gentlemen who have waved a theatrical adieu as they 
mounted into the sky are civil employees of the 
Meudon University. Five minutes later the '' Urania " 
shoots into the heavens. Captain Vernanchet sits in 
its car, shaped like a boat and painted red. He has 
a burlesque steering apparatus in the bow, and at the 
stern is an umbrella, which he works violently as 
though he wxre sculling his boat over a celestial sea. 
Cheers and hilarious laughter greet the operation, for 
this is the gallant captain's little way of protesting 
against the decision to exclude steerable balloons — 
so-called — from the competition. 

The crowd is now in ecstasies of delight, for every 
five minutes another balloon pops up and is borne 



THE "CENTAURE" DESCRIBED. 6/ 

away in the north-east wind. The third to go is 
M. Jacques Faure, and his balloon is called the '' Aero 
Club.'* The fourth is the famous "Centaure" in which 
the young Count de la Vaulx has already estab- 
lished long-distance ^'records." As he rises now, 
bowing, cap in hand, to the multitude, he is greeted 
w ith cries of " Vive la Russie ! " Prophetic cries ; for 
the north-east wind has caught him in its embrace, 
and is hurrying him towards the kingdom of the 
Czar. See how the heavens favour the Franco- 
Russian alliance ! 

'' Here is a veteran of more than thirty ascents 
during the last year and a half," said an expert as 
the '^Centaure" rose in the air — "a fatigued and 
well-worn veteran which has been ripped open in 
many a landing, covered with w^ounds hastily patched 
up, made heavy by successive revarnishings and 
repairs. It is a balloon of medium size, having a 
(h'spo.-^^able ballast of only 1,760 pounds. It is a cheap 
construction, too, a simple cotton affair that costs 
scarcely more than the price of a voiturette, and yet 
it goes farther, quicker, and more certainly than its 
more costly rivals. Why, I do not kno\y. Born 
under a lucky star, I suppose. But what a delightful 
way of travelling! In a day and a half by balloon 
we cover a distance which it takes nearly a week to 
leturn by train, with all the jolting, the cinders, the 
f ontiers, the bad meals, the customs annoyances. 
Ah, there is nothing like ballooning ! " 

The fifth balloon to get away is the gigantic "St. 
Louis," the capacity of which is 3,000 cubic metres. 
Her captain is M. Jacques Balsan, another of the 



68 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

gilded youth of Paris who have found a new sensation 
in ballooning. He carries two passengers with him. 
In quick succession follow the remaining seven 
balloons, signalled by volley after vojley of cheers. 
The boulevards hum that evening with talk of aero- 
nautics. In materialistic Paris it is seldom that one 
hears so much about the heavens ; rarely do the 
thoughts of the populace mount even as high as the 
" Centaure." 

Next afternoon excitement is renewed as the 
telegrams come in, telling of the fortunes which have 
attended the various competitors. Two have landed 
in Holland, one has come down in Westphalia, four 
have not got out of France, and the humorous 
'* Vernanchet " only got a little way out from Paris. 
One had arrived on the edge of the Baltic, after a 
voyage of 496 miles, lasting fourteen hours. But 
this was nothing. The " Centaure " had done that 
and better already. Nor did M. Faure accomplish a 
wonder by travelling to Mamlitz in eastern Prussia, 
753 miles away. But there still remained the "Cen- 
taure " and the '' St. Louis " to account for, and 
soon the news came that the former had descended 
near VVloclaweck, in Russian Poland, having made 
the journey of 766 miles in twenty-one hours thirty- 
four minutes, while M. Balsan's balloon had come 
down in eastern Prussia, near Dantzig, 757 miles 
away, in twenty-two hours. Count de la Vaulx was 
the winner, with Balsan second, and Paris went mad 
with joy over the first balloon voyage into the 
country of France's *^ally." 

" I could have gone some distance further," said 



COUNT DE LA VAULX'S VICTORY. 69 

de la Vaulx himself, on his return to Paris a few 
days later, " as I had on hand more than 200 pounds 
of ballast. But I was afraid of getting so far into 
the interior of Russia, away from the railways and 
telegraphs, that I could not get back in time for 
the next race. So I decided to land. It was wxll I 
did. Though they had the telegraph at hand they 
kept me in gaol for twenty-four hours, till my case 
could be officially investigated." 

The opening of the aerial route, " from France 
to Russia," as the Parisian Press put it, created 
immense excitement among a people who are easily 
excited, and the final balloon race on October 9th 
was a scene of even more remarkable enthusiasm 
than that which we have just described. There were 
six competitors. The Count de la Vaulx was the 
only one who used the expensive hydrogen for 
inflation, and he was accompanied on this occasion 
by the Count de Castillon. But the hydrogen 
generator did not work effectively, and after some 
hours of effort he was fain to pan out with ordinary 
gas. 

The results of the final race left the two who were 
first in the previous race again in the same relative 
positions. Here is the official record of the event : 

First — M. le Comte Henri de la Vaulx, descend- 
ing, after thirty-five hours, and forty-five minutes of 
voyage, at Korosticheff, in Russia, travelled a bird's 
flight distance of 1,925 kilometres (1,193 niiles) 
from the point of departure. Maximum altitude, 
5,700 metres (18,810 feet). 

Second— M. Jacques Balsan, descending near 



JO THE CONQUEST OF THE An< 

Rodom, in Russia, after twenty-seven hours and 
twenty-five minutes of voyage, travelled a bird's 
fight distance of 1,360 kilometres (843 miles) from 
the point of departure. Maximum altitude, 6,540 
metres (21,582 feet). 

The other contestants had made distances vary- 
ing from 550 to 950 kilometres. 

Count de la Vaulx was naturally the hero of the 
hour in Paris, for had he not broken all aeronautical 
records, both for length of journey and duration of 
voyage, and landed twice within a fortnight in Russia, 
and was he not a Parisian ? 

Mr. Walter Wellman has been able to publish some 
interesting extracts from the '' log-book '' of the 
" Centaure " and from his excellent magazine article 
on the subject we take the following particulars. In 
his log-book Count de la Vaulx confesses that his 
craft was filled with 1,400 metres of hydrogen and 
only 200 metres of illuminating gas. At the start 
it lifted a total weight of 1,485 kilogrammes, thus 
apportioned : Weight of balloon, car, and appurt- 
enances, 540 kilos; passengers' w^eight, 145 kilos; 
weight of instruments and oxygen tubes (the latter 
for respiration of the travellers at great altitudes), forty 
kilos ; sand ballast, 775 kilos ; ballast in provisions, 
twenty-five kilos. At 7.20 p.m. the log contains this 
entry : " Fine night — used sixth sack of ballast." At 
8.20: " 1,500 metres altitude ; course E.N.E. We are 
above the fog." At 8.40 : " We have finished dinner. 
A balloon is following us." At 9.10 : " 1,600 metres ; 
good equilibrium. Over large city." At mid- 
night : ^' Passed to south of Ponds of Bairon." At 



FROM ''CENTAURK's" LOG-BOOK. 71 

12.10 a.m. : "Traversing the Ardennes Canal." At 
1.40 : " Little inhabited country." xAt 2.15 : '' The fog 
mist forming rapidly, we, mounting with it, see the 
earth no more." At 3.20: ''Thick mist all around 
us. Used eighth sack." 

After day had fully come a note says: "We are 
in a mountainous country, Bavaria, without doubt ? " 
The entry ends with a mark of interrogation, never- 
theless. " This," said de la Vaulx, descanting upon 
the joys of ballooning, " is the charm of the whole 
thing. The balloonist becomes an explorer. Say 
you are a young man who would like to roam a 
little ; you want adventures ; you want to penetrate 
the unknown. But you are tied down at home by 
family, business, whatnot. Well, you take to balloon- 
ing. At noon you have luncheon with your family. 
At two o'clock you ascend. Fifteen minutes later 
you are no longer a commonplace denizen of the 
easy-going town — you are an adventurer into the 
unknown, an explorer as surely as any who melt 
in Africa or freeze in the Arctic. You do not know 
any too well where you are at any given moment, 
and as for knowing where you are going, or when 
you are to get there, why, that is all a guess. See 
how amusing it may be ! It is principally chance 
and the winds. Yet you have something to say 
about it too —something depends upon you, your 
skill, your nerve, your wisdom, your experience. 
Then, when you decide to come down, it is really 
jolly to speculate upon \\ hat country it may chance 
to be, what language the people speak there, and 
how they will receive you." 



72 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

This mad race through the clouds continued all 
day (writes Mr. Wellman in The Idler). The two 
ships of the air were flying, neck and neck, over 
southern Germany and Bohemia. In the early 
morning the rivals began a series of competitive 
manoeuvres — the yachtsmanship of the atmospheric 
ocean. When the '^Centaure " threw out ballast and 
rose above the mist clouds, the ''St. Louis" followed 
suit. When the '' Centaure" let out a little gas and 
descended nearer the earth, the "St. Louis " lost no 
time in executing a similar movement. So near to- 
gether were the racers at one moment that de la 
Vaulx and Goddard in their respective balloons were 
able to make out the identity of their competitor. 
At nine o'clock they passed over a large city, but 
they could not guess its name. In an hour they 
passed another town, also a wide river, and still they 
did not know where they were. '' Balsan is always 
mounting," says the '' Centaure's " log-book ; '* he has 
passed in front of us, and is working more towards the 
south. This continual mounting," it is recorded with 
evident satisfaction, '' wall doubtless shorten his trip.'* 

At two o'clock in the afternoon the sun was 
clouded over, and the balloon suffered such a great 
condensation that they were compelled to throw 
out several sacks of ballast, and even at that fell 
near enough the earth to have a good view of a 
large city, which they thought w^as Posen. *' Our 
rival has also descended from the high altitudes,'' 
says the log, '' and appears to be going with his 
guide-rope." Later in the afternoon the wind became 
more violent ; there were only six sacks of ballast 



FROM THE LOG-BOOK OF THE "ST. LOUIS." "Jl 

remaining ; but as the country appeared to be one 
of plains, they decided to pass the second night in 
the air. " Our rival has disappeared," notes the log- 
book of the '' Centaure," with an air of triumph and 
finality. 

M. Goddard, the famous aeronaut, who accom- 
panied M. Jacques Balsan in the great '' St. Louis," 
has also given an intensely interesting account of the 
race from his point of view, and this is worthy of 
being placed on record along with the victor's story. 
M. Goddard says : 

*' During the night we were busy trying to keep 
our equilibrium, going neither too high nor too 
low, and wondering where our rivals wxre. At 
seven o'clock next morning we were over Coblentz, 
and had already made 500 kilometres. At eight 
o'clock the influence of the bright morning sun 
upon the volume of gas in our big balloon carried 
us very quickly to a height of over 4,000 metres. A 
few seconds later vre were delighted to sight the 
* Centaure ' but a little ahead of us, and running in 
a course parallel to ours. This was a race indeed ! 
All day we were able to travel together, each of us 
undergoing, in proportion to our volume of gas, the 
alternations of dilatation and condensation. Little 
clouds, masking the sun, instantly reduced the 
volume of our spheres and compelled us to throw 
over ballast. 

*' When the sun came out again it warmed the 
great balk of gas, and so added to the volume by 
dilatation that several times we were compelled to 
let out gas in order to escape rising to a dangerous 



74 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

altitude. Late in the afternoon both balloons had 
risen to between 6,000 and 7,000 metres, which was 
quite as high as any of us cared to go. Before 
w^e descended to a lower level we saw the ' Centaure ' 
far below us, manipulating its guide-rope along the 
surface of the earth. Suddenly our rival shot up 
rapidly, and we saw no more of him. We w^ere now 
in the neighbourhood of Breslau or Posen, and we 
were made very sad by the disappearance of our 
ballast, of which only about ninety kilos remained. 

'' Night was coming again, but we were determined 
to stay afloat as long as possible. As we passed over 
the German-Russian frontier four shots were fired 
at us, probably by customs inspectors who thought 
we might be smuggling. We heard the whistle of 
the bullets, but fortunately the ' St. Louis ' was not 
hit. Just before dark we were making splendid 
speed ; our instruments showed seventy kilometres 
per hour due cast. We sighed for more ballast. But 
now, behind us, we could see a tempest forming, 
with lightning and thunder. We had only thirty kilos 
of ballast left, and if the rain should overtake us our 
balloon would absorb thrice that weight of water, 
and we should be carried down to earth whether we 
wished or not, and probably in the most awk\vard 
of spots. We had no desire to descend in a forest, 
and so we began spying out, as best we could in the 
thick of the storm, a clear space in which to alight. 
One appeared just behind a forest. M. Balsan 
pulled the valve rope, and, despite the violence, 
of the wind, the ' St. Louis ' came to the ground 
gently and with only five metres of dragging. Some 



END OF THE GREAT BALLOON RACE. 75 

peasants came running up, and one of them we sent 
for a waggon, while the others aided us to empty 
the balloon of the remaining gas — only 1,300 or 1,400 
metres cube were left out of the 3,000 with which we 
had started — and by midnight we had arrived at a 
village. We were given milk and black bread to 
eat, and a hayloft to sleep in. 

'* Next morning, early, a good-natured gendarme 
roused us with the explanation that, as we had no 
passports, he was compelled to escort us to the police 
authorities at a neighbouring town. The police^ 
amiable but firm, declined to let us go without orders 
from their superiors, and it was nine o'clock that 
night before the telegraph brought permission for 
us to return to Paris." 

Such is a fairly comprehensive record of one of 
the most remarkable episodes in the annals of aerial 
navigation ; and we pass now to the consideration 
of the progress made in the construction and direc- 
tion of airships as distinct from ordinary balloons. 



CHAPTER V. 

The Exploits of Senor Santos-Durnont — The Principle of his 
Airships — First Round the Eiffel Tower — Shipwrecked in 
Mid-air. 

Since the far-off days when Montgolfier first dis- 
covered that a balloon could be made to rise into 
cloudland by means of heated air, it is doubtful if 
there has ever been such a sensation as that occa- 
sioned by the efforts of Senor Alberto de Santos- 
Dumont to win the Deutsch prize by steering a 
balloon from the grounds of the Aero Club, at St. 
Cloud, round the Eiffel Tower and back to the place 
of starting in thirty minutes, an aerial journey of over 
seven miles. Indeed, it may safely be said that no 
such sensation has ever been occasioned in the 
history of aeronautics ; for in the early days of the art 
there did not exist that world-wide system of tele- 
graphy and the Press, which has enabled people in 
the remotest quarters of the globe to follow with deep 
interest the exploits of this most daring of modern 
aeronauts. 

It is a curious coincidence — perhaps more than a 
coincidence — that Senor Santos-Dumont is a Brazilian, 
like that pioneer of aerial navigation, the monk 
named Bartholomeo Lourenco de Gusmao, who, early 

76 



THE "SANTOS-DUMONT VII." ^^ 

in the eighteenth century, made an ascent from 
Lisbon in an extraordinary airship, which has been 
described at some length in our opening pages. 
Indeed, Gusmao actually hailed from the State of 
St. Paulo, of which Seiior Santos-Dumont is also a 
native. But while the enterprise of Santos-Dumont 
has been splendidly rewarded, the efforts of his 
far-off countryman were recognised, as we have 
heard, by death at the hands of the Inquisition. 

The luckier Santos-Dumont was born at Rio de 
Janiero in 1873, so that he is still quite a young man. 
The youngest of a family of ten sons, his father, who 
was of French descent on his mother's side, is a 
wealthy coffee planter and is know^n, indeed, as the 
Coffee King, employing six thousand labourers, and 
having over forty miles of light railways on his estate. 
This coffee planter being himself a man of culture, 
and having graduated at the famous Engineers' 
School at Paris, encouraged the mechanical bent of 
the mind of young Alberto, who, when only twelve 
years of age, was fond of driving his father's steam- 
engines. It was due, no doubt, to this early experience 
and his life-long fondness for mechanics, that Alberto 
acquired the knowledge which has enabled him to 
inaugurate a new era in scientific ballooning. 

In 1897 young Santos-Dumont came to Europe, 
and, like all wealthy Brazilians, w^as naturally drawn 
to Paris. It is not stated w^hether he had attempted 
any aerial flights in his native Brazil, but there can 
be no doubt that he w^as strongly fascinated by 
the art before coming to Europe, though his first 
ascent in the old world was the rather commonplace 



78 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

climb of Mont Blanc ; made, of course, on foot. But 
in 1898 he was the possessor of the tiniest balloon 
ever made for carrying a man aloft — a mere toy 
affair indeed. 

It was named the '' Brazil," and was made of 
the lightest Japanese silk, having a capacity of a 
little over 3,000 cubic feet. His first ascent in 
the car of this little balloon took place from the 
Jardin d' Acclimatisation, and a few months later, in 
September, 1898, we find him in possession of his 
first steerable balloon or airship, the motor of which 
had been taken from a motor-tricycle and its power 
developed by petroleum. His initial attempt to soar 
aloft was a complete fiasco, the balloon being torn 
beyond repair, but with proverbial good luck the young 
aeronaut escaped without hurt. Since that time he 
has made no less than seven flying-machines, each 
one showing some improvement on its predecessor. 

The general principle of all his aerostats has been 
the same — a compromise between the balloon and the 
flying-machine. His latest airship, '' Santos-Dumont 
VH.", is about twice the size of its predecessor, in 
which he twice rounded the Eiffel Tower. That is 
to say, the cigar-shaped balloon is some two hundred 
feet in length and rather more than twenty-four feet 
at its greatest diamicter, holding over 30,000 feet 
of gas, and having a lifting capacity of nearly one 
ton. The envelope, which is made of finest soie de 
Cliine is inflated with hydrogen-gas and encloses 
two small air-balloons, which help to give rigidity 
to the larger envelope. There is no framework in 
the balloon ; pressure of the gas alone keeps it rigid. 



MAKING A BALLOON. 79 

The car or frame-work, which is hung beneath the 
balloon, is entirely the invention of Senor Santos- 
Dumont. It consists of three long triangular rods 
held together by a series of triangular braces and 
pointed at the ends after the manner of the balloon 
itself. The triangular section offers least resistance to 
the wind. Between the third and fourth braces from 
the prow — if we may use the term — is situated the 
wicker-basket in which the aeronaut takes his stand 
and where all the complicated machinery for control- 
ing the motors and the helm are placed. 

Amidships are the two powerful motors, each of 
forty-five horse-power, which is an enormous difference 
compared with the sixteen horse-power motor of the 
" Santos-Dumont VI." At the stern, and connected 
with the motors by means of a hollow shaft, is the 
propeller with its tuo great blades of skin stretched 
over wire frames ; and above the propeller rises the 
mighty rudder, somewhat similar in its construction, 
the cords for moving it stretching to the aeronaut in 
the basket. The forepart of the frame is weighted 
with several water-vessels in order to balance the whole. 

It is claimed for it that the method of keeping the 
cylinders of the motors cool is the secret of Senor 
Santos-Dumont's success. This is effected by means 
of a refrigerator, which consists of a ballonet and a 
ventilator. 

The whole framework — we can scarcely call it 
a car — is hung to the immense gas-bag with piano 
wires fixed in a series of eyelets. These wires look 
as fragile as thread, but each is capable of supporting 
three-quarters of a hundredweight, and as there are 



80 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

many hundreds of them there need be no fear on 
that score. When running at high speed these 
wires hum Hke an ^olian harp. " Santos-Dumont 
VII.'' has a speed of forty miles an hour. 

It IS estimated that this most famous of all the 
navigators of the air has spent upwards of ;^2 5,000 
on his series of airships, and some slight idea of 
the costliness of constructing the balloon portion 
alone may be gained from the following description 
of the making of one of his silken envelopes : 

" It is made of beautiful Japanese silk, fine, white, 
and transparent, yet strong enough to bear a surprising 
weight by square metre ranging from 900 to 1000 
kilogrammes. This wonderful silk was brought to 
the balloon factory ready varnished with a waterproof 
composition, and v/as then entrusted to a few skilled 
men to be systematically cut en forme in forty zones 
or circular sections, each divided in turns in sixteen 
trapezium panels, and strictly of the same size. The 
thirty-two panels of two corresponding zones on 
either side of the small axe were therefore cut at 
once, with due allowance for the seam turnings. 
The two small pieces for the peaks, requiring more 
strength, had to be doubled. The next process was 
the stitching by sewing-machine, executed by expert 
women who had to regulate to a nicety the tension 
of the stitches, a most important item to secure the 
proper stretching of the silk bag. The zones and 
various pieces joined into series then passed through 
the hands of different workmen, who, with brush 
and varnish, went carefully over the seams to close 
the minute prickings of the sewing-machine. Each 




santos-dumunt's airship on the ground. 



82 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

round had then to be slipped on a kind of wicker- 
work inanneqidn and raised out of the way, Hke a 
chandelier to the ceiling, to let dry. Once more 
the detached sections of the silk were taken back 
to the machinists to be sewn definitely into a 
complete bag or shuttle case. Again the newly 
made seams had to be varnished over and dried. 
The entire length of the seams is put down as 1,500 
metres, whilst the cost of the envelope is estimated 
approximately at ;^300." This was the balloon for 
" Santos-Dumont VI.'' 

It was in 1899 that M. Deutsch, a well-known 
petroleum refiner and member of the Aero Club, 
made his offer of iJ'4,000 to the aeronaut who 
succeeded in directing an airship from the grounds 
of the club round the Eiffel Tower and back to 
the starting-point in half an hour. Seiior Santos- 
Dumont had already succeeded in circumnavigating 
the Eiffel Tower, though this fact does not seem to 
have attracted wide notice. But the conditions of 
this prize were severe, both in respect to time and 
place, and when, in the summer of 1901, it became 
known that the young Brazilian meant to enter for 
it, all Paris was agog with excitement. 

Several preliminary trips were made, and on 
Saturday, July iSth, 1901, the intrepid explorer of 
the atmospheric ocean set out from St. Cloud on 
board the " Santos-Dumont V." to try for the prize. 
He failed, but failed splendidly. Leaving the Pare 
d'Aerostation at St. Cloud at 6.41 in the morning, 
he reached the tower in thirteen minutes, rounding 
it at the level of the second platform, within a distance 



SANTOS-DUMONTS FIRST TRIAL. 8j 

of thirty yards, and coming back against a hca,l 
wind, reached the Aero Club's grounds at 7.22, thus 
making a trip of more than seven miles at an average 
speed of thirteen and three-quarter miles an hour. 
But an accident occurred before the aeronaut could 
land in the grounds. 

"This performance is above either praise or 
criticism ! " exclaimed an eye-witness. " It is a new 
fact in our lives." 

The epoch-making trip, failure though it w^as, 
has been splendidly described by the Paris corre- 
spondent of the Daily News, who points out in the 
first place that the weather was distinctly unfavour- 
able to the enterprise. The correspondent writes 
as follows : 

''About 5.20 a.m. the gates of the huge shed were 
thrown wide open. The balloon, inflated about 3 a.m., 
was released from its sand-bag moorings and brought 
out into the open, where it was eisily made fast, 
the Santos- Dumont balloon being just poised and 
depending upon its machinery to raise or sink it. 
It looked like a gigantic double-pointed cigar. Its 
length is iio feet, and its capacity is exactly 550 
cubic metres or about 15,000 cubic feet, which means 
that, being inflated with hydrogen, its ascensional 
force is about ten hundredweight. As the balloon 
is exactly poised, that figure may be taken as the 
weight of the balloon including the car, its occupant, 
a small quantity of ballast, and the engine. This 
engine, built by M. Beche, belongs to the famous 
Daimler type of oil-motors. It is the lightest one 
of its power in the world, developing fifteen horse- 



84 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

power, and weighing a few ounces under i8o pounds, 
being but eleven pounds for every horse-power. I 
should be afraid to ask the price of such a motor 
de luxe^ which is more like a piece of goldsmith's 
workmanship. It has four cylinders. The shaft is 
hollow, and it works a single screw with two blades of 
thirteen feet span, and revolving two hundred times a 
minute. The rudder, placed a little behind and above 
the screw, is a piece of silk stretched on a triangular 
frame. The car, the engine shaft, and screw, are 
all mounted in tandem on a light bamboo frame 
running beneath the balloon, and fixed to it by means 
of steel wires that look like gossamer. The frame- 
work is held together by aluminium joints. 

" Every detail of the machine has been thought 
out, contrived, and tested with the utmost care. 
M. Deutsch was one of the most enthusiastic in 
wishing godspeed to M. Santos-Dumont, whose every 
trip in his airship is, of course, taken at the risk of 
his life. M. Ren^ de Knyff, one of the three or four 
competitors in the Paris-Berlin motor-car race, listened 
to the loud rattle of the motor, and shook his head 
from time to time. A sound like that of a pistol 
shot showed that everything was not all right. It 
turned out that one of the four cylinders was out of 
order. On the return journey — if I may anticipate — 
another cylinder got out of order through overheating, 
and this spoilt everything. 

" M. Santos-Dumont, who, it need hardly be said, 
is a thorough sportsman, declared that he would start 
and try his luck. Just then the wind was blowing 
seven yards a second. M. Santos-Dumont had 



AT TWENTY MILES AN HOUR. 85 

taken his place in the tiny wicker-basket just large 
enough for the short and slender man he is, — 
and I suspect he has been reducing weight these 
last few weeks, — he had thrown off his coat, and 
was in his shirt-sleeves, wearing a light Panama hat. 
It was 6.30 ; the morning was gloriously beautiful. 
At the foot of St. Cloud heights was the silver 
streak of the Seine, beyond which the trees of the 
Bois de Boulogne appeared like a green sea overhung 
with a slight mist. Beyond, phantom-like, rose the 
Eiffel Tower, the colossal mile-post of this trial. 
M. Deutsch once more shook hands with M. Santos- 
Dumont, and warmly, indeed, affectionately, wished 
him speedy return. M. Jeantaud began to count off 
the seconds by the chronometer. A dead silence 
prevailed among the crowd. ' Let go ! ' ^ Good 
luck ! ' cried back hundreds of voices. The engine 
rattled like mad. Slowly the flying-machine soared 
aloft ; the guide-rope caught here and there, seeing 
which, and the danger it portended, M. Santos- 
Dumont threw out a few handfuls of sand until it 
had cleared the trees. 

"The balloon turned first to the north, as if to 
sniff the breeze. Then, about sixty feet from the 
ground, it bore round, the nose pointing upwards 
as if climbing a gradient. It described a beautiful 
sweep in the air until it pointed towards the Eiffel 
Tower, when it shot off in a straight line at the 
rate of twenty miles an hour. Everybody's heart 
was with the plucky little Brazilian. A tremendous 
cheer went up, echoed by several thousand persons 
outside. The beautiful manoeuvre at the start was 



86 THE CONQUEST OF THE Am. 

SO novel, startling, and significant that everybody 
was thrilled. ^ Vive Santos ! ' cheered the crowd as 
if with one voice. Then there was a rush to some 
rising ground in the neighbourhood. The airship 
was sinking, and was carried by the wind a little out 
cf its course. But it soon got back again and, some 
trees being in the way, nothing more could be seen 
of it. Some with glasses thought they saw it creep- 
ing behind the Eiffel Tower, but they could not be 
sure because of the mist. A few seconds later it 
appeared on the other side hugging the Tower. 
' Bravo ! ' ' Well done ! ' The little speck was 
growing larger and blacker, and the poli.J.ed brass 
cylinder flashed towards St. Cloud like a heliograph 
announcing good news. It v.as now only a few 
hundred yards distant. The cheers were deafening 
— cheers of enthusiasm. But the wind freshened, 
the balloon made headway, then, weakened, its pro- 
peller was slcickening ; it came in a plumb line above 
I he Pare d' Aerostation, then the propeller stopped. 
What did it mean? The timer announced that it 
w^as ten minutes late. Cheers broke out again — 
cheers of encouragement. Well done, all the same. 
Then the propeller was seen to stop, and the balloon 
was carrieei aw^ay towards the Eois de Boulogne, 
where it was seen to sink among the trees in Baron 
l^ldmund de Rothschild's park." 

Senor Santos- Dumont explained the accident to 
the Daily News correspondent in these words : 

" The motor did not work as it ought, and the side 
v/ind delayed me. I reached the Eiffel Tower in 
thirteen minutes, and went round it with, the utmost 



A SUCCESSFUL FAILURE. 87 

case. But the return was more difficult ; and above 
Autcuil a second cylinder broke down. I had to 
throw out ballast, and this disturbed the equilibrium 
cf the airship, so that I was unable to come down 
at the right moment. As I w^as afraid of being 
carried away to Paris, where I should have come to 
grief, I determined to land in Baron de Rothschild's 
park. The balloon spun round and was caught in 
some trees. I hung on to a branch while the 
gardeners were bringing ladders. I was able to bring 
down my balloon — which I was delighted to find had 
suffered no damage. Baron Edmund de Rothschild 
came up to me, and said that if it were necessary, 
in order to save the balloon, he would at once order 
the trees to be cut down." 

So ended the first of his series of plucky and 
eventually successful attempts to carry off the Deutsch 
prize. But he had already established the great fact 
that it was not altogether impossible, even against 
variable winds, to steer an airship to a given point 
and return to the place of starting. He had also 
proved that the question of his winning this prize, 
which was meant to mark an epoch in the science 
of aerial navigation, was only one of a few more 
improvements in his machinery. 

This trip made him the lion of the hour in Paris, 
and attracted universal attention. Indeed, the curious 
jealousy of the French for all foreigners who en- 
deavour to win honour in their country soon asserted 
itself, and when it became apparent that a Brazilian 
was likely to carry off the Deutsch prize and not 
— as they had hoped — a P^'enchman, Santos-Dumont 



88 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

became the object of an extraordinary outburst of 
jealousy on the part of Parisian "sportsmen," though 
he remained a popular hero with the people, and 
calmly went about his preparations for a further 
attempt. 

His next ascent with the same airship took place 
on the afternoon of Monday, July 29th, at half-past 
three, when he was favoured with splendid weather. 
After three false starts, due to the loosening of part 
of the machinery, the young aeronaut m^ade an ex- 
cellent ascent, and having risen 200 yards, he put 
his motor and propeller into action, and the balloon 
proceeded in a straight line towards the south- 
east. Sailing right round the Longchamps Hippo- 
drome, he followed the Hne of the big track, then 
came back to his starting-point without accidents, 
the whole expedition having lasted fifteen and a 
half minutes. 

Seilor Santos-Dumont stated that he was quite 
satisfied with his experiment and that he had made 
a good deal of progress since his previous attempt. 
The reason why he did not renew his attempt to 
gain the prize for rounding the Eiffel Tower, was 
that his motor became too heated, and his airship 
pitched too much, and also that he himself had hurt 
his hand, so that the experiment would not have 
been carried out in very favourable circumstances. 

Perhaps the most momentous day in the life of 
Santos-Dumont was Thursday, August 8th, when 
he again endeavoured to fulfil the conditions laid 
down by M. Deutsch. The most vivid account of 
that memorable morning was that penned by the 



ANOTHER TRIAL FOR THE DEUTSCH PRIZE. 89 

Paris correspondent of the Daily Express, to whom 
we are indebted for the particulars which follow. 
This correspondent, it should be noted, had gone to 
the Eiffel Tower on a big I\Iors racing-motor, having 
arranged with the aeronaut to race back to St. Cloud : 

'' At six o'clock we saw the balloon climb high into 
the heavens and turn its yellow prow toward the 
tower. Santos-Dumont came rushing in flight as 
straight as a rifle barrel, and seeming as fast as a 
rifle bullet. His ship was sailing with the wind, and 
sailing faster than ever moved a Yankee cup defender. 
The rattle of the motor, heard a mile and a half away, 
brought people to the roofs. The workmen gazed 
aloft. It was an exhilarating spectacle, thrilling, 
enchanting. At 6.5 Santos-Dumont was at the 
tower. He rounded the great iron stake boat with 
ease, gracefully slowing down, so as to convince all 
of his performance ; and as the ship swung around 
there was a mighty cheering from near and far. 
Santos-Dumont waved his hat in pleased response. 

^' So far all was well. But now a very Iliad of 
troubles began. The wind beat the airship back, the 
motor worked badly, and the gas began escaping, for 
a piano wire had ripped open an eyelet. Santos- 
Dumont soared upwards to twice the height of the 
Eiffel Tower, and then, 2,000 -feet in air, climbed 
from his basket and clambered along the dipping, 
swaying, gossamer-like keel to overhaul his motor. 
It was sublime daring. 

" Men belovv' him turned away their eyes. Santos- 
Dumont stood well outside his basket on two slender 
sticks, not so large as broom handles and three feet 



90 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

apart. He held on by the third sHm strand of wood 
that formed the apex of the triangular keel. The 
glass showed every movement. He worked furiously 
for a few seconds, and then went back to his car. 
All this time he was beating slowly back towards 
St Cloud. 

" It was easy to beat Santos-Dumont back at that 
rate. The Mors crossed the bridge, and flew up the 
Ouai de Passy for about half a mile. We stopped 
near the river, for Santos-Dumont was making small 
headway. His ship plunged like a lightly laden vessel 
in a great storm. It was fully one quarter deflated, 
and the motor was working feebly. When the bow 
rose up the gas swelled it full, and the stern crinkled 
and doubled over empty. As the bow dipped this 
action was reversed, the stern" filled and was buoyant, 
while the other end sagged like a wet towel. 

'' Bravely Santos-Dumont kept the prow to the 
wind ; magnificently he struggled to gain St. Cloud. 
Once the ship turned as if to run before the wind, 
and did go a few yards, when Santos-Dumont swung 
her back to her course. A short gain followed, then 
came a standstill, and the ship fluttered in the air 
and flopped alarmingly. Santos-Dumont was being 
tossed on great wind swells in a wrecked airship ! 

'' The stern sagged, and the propeller, still slowly 
revolving, caught in the supporting piano wires. 
There was a ripping and a rush of gas. With a 
sickening, despairing flop the airship began falling. 
It was half a mile distant from the right bank of 
the Seine. One could hear screams from every 
housetop. But Santos-Dumont, as seen through 



SHIPWRECKED IN MID-AIR. 91 

the Hasscs, \\as in no dcijrcc alarmed. Though 
falling at hi^^h-specd he kept his head, and slipped 
the heavy guide-rop^ down by the propeller in ord^r 
to lower that end. As he was in the bow it was 
better for him to have the stern hit the ground 
first. He fastened his belt to a hook in the basket. 
This took seconds only. 

" In the first thousand feet the wind was blowing 
the ship so that it slid down a long incline whose 
end appeared to be the Seine. The last thousand feet 
were covered with a rush like that of a lift falling 
down its well. At the last moment, when almost 
on the roof of a great hotel, the last between him 
and the river, which flowed 100 feet away across the 
Quai, Santos-Dumont flung out ballast. Falliiig at 
that velocity it was amazing how he did it, but, when 
only a few feet above the roof, he threw out sand 
in showers. 

"It seemed for a slight fraction of a second that he 
had thus escaped the roof, and would be precipitated 
in the Seine, where a boat had already been manned 
to pick him up. The keel carrying Santos-Dumont 
and the motor had skimmed over the edge of the 
high roof, but the silk lagging behind caught at 
the extreme end on a chimney-pot just as the last 
[)art was going over. The balloon itself tore right 
in two, but the wires running from the prow to the 
keel caught also, and they held. With a mighty jerk 
Santos-Dumont stopped his flight in mid-air, suspended 
forty feet from the ground against a blank wall eighty 
feet high. His keel hung by the wires stern downw ard 
with half the balloon draped about it. The other half 



92 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

hung to the chimney-pot. Santos-Dumont lay hori- 
zontally on his back in the car, his head and shoulders 
clear outside. 

*' Then a new danger arose. The wires began to 
tear loose and the keel to drop. Santos-Dumont 
was cool still. By swaying his body he swung the 
lower end of the keel upon a ledge, where it rested. 
Still the danger was not over. The keel standing on 
end was forty feet high, and Santos-Dumont w^as at 
the top. His weight made the light affair topple 
perilously toward the great court. Again he was 
Ulyssean in his craft. Hanging on by his belt to the 
basket, he pulled the yielding wires until the keel 
balanced on end. Then he gave a quick jerk, and it 
fell into a corner, and the great danger was over." 

The above is a graphic account of a scene which is 
surely unique in the annals of the air, and the cool- 
ness which Sciior Santos-Dumont exhibited in these 
most perilous circumstances could not be surpassed. 
While still in his uncomfortable position, he called 
to his friend, the clever journalist whose sketch we 
have quoted from, to drop him a cigarette, the cor- 
respondent, along with the firemen who had come 
to rescue the aeronaut, being on the roof of the hotel. 
Santos-Dumont was eventually released from his 
uncomfortable position by the firemen hauling him 
up the wall by means of a rope. ^' He w^as laughing 
like a boy, unworried and enthusiastic." That is 
the stuff successful aeronauts are made of! It was 
probably this dramatic coolness in the face of great 
danger that appealed to the Figaro, which instantly 
suggested that the Cross of the Legion of Honour 



THE CAUSE OF THE DISASTER. 93 

should be conferred on him. The damage done to 
the airship was estimated at ;^2,ooo. 

The disaster naturally produced a crop of criticisms, 
most of which went to show the futility of trying to 
drive a balloon through the ain Mr. George Griffiths, 
well-known as an author and traveller, said : 

"The lesson of this disaster, if M. Santos-Dumont 
will so far modify his splendid courage as to be able to 
understand it, is simply this — The navigable balloon 
is navigable only in a calm or in light winds, and 
it often happens that a balloon may rise in a calm 
from the earth, and at, say, 1,000 feet, meet a wind 
blowing thirty miles an hour. I once did this, and 
met one blowing sixty. In such a case he certainly 
would not have escaped with his life in fact, he 
would have been blown over the sharp edge of 
eternity, and would have found his end anywhere on 
the continent of Europe or the Mediterranean, 
according to the direction of the wind." 

Mr. Griffiths, of course, is one of those who refuse 
to believe in the possibility of any airship ever being 
made which will be capable of driving against head- 
winds, so long as the principle of the balloon is 
retained in any degree. He contends that what 
■happened to Santos-Dumont was that the balloon 
caved in when forced by the machinery against a 
contrary wind ; the hydrogen gas became compressed 
— it is capable under pressure of being solidified — 
and as it was forced by air pressure to the end of the 
balloon it tended to upset the equilibrium, and that 
once lost, all is lost but luck. Fortunately Santos- 
Dumont preserved his luck. As a matter of fact, 



94 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

the aeronaut himself' denies that his balloon has ever 
been vitally affected by being forced against the 
wind. 

The author from whom we have just quoted 
recounts an incident which happened to himself 
when crossing the channel in a balloon. ^' At a 
height of 7,000 feet a dense cloud came between us 
and the sun," he says. " The gas in the envelope 
shrank, and in five minutes we fell 2,500 feet Now, 
if we had only been 1,000 feet above the channel 
when that ^happened we should have been smashed 
up on the surface of the channel, because when you 
hit w^ater like that it is practically as hard as one of 
London's streets. This is another of the impossi- 
bilities which block the way of the navigable 
balloonist. The slightest fall in temperature diminishes 
the volume of the gas instantly, and unless you get 
the ballast out pretty quickly, down you come. If 
you have not the ballast nothing can save you, and 
no so-called navigable balloon can carry sufficient 
ballast, plus the motor, to save from a fate like 
this, granted the circumstances which I have just 
described." 

He argues from this that had Santos-Dumont 
fallen 1,000 feet he would have been done for; and 
the conclusion seems reasonable. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Santos-Dumont's Achievements — Failure and Success--" King 
of the Air" — Ambitious Projects. 

No warnings, of course, could cool the ardour of 
the intrepid young Brazilian, and almost as soon 
as the circumstances of his shipwreck in mid-air 
became known, the fact that he had ordered a 
new flying-machine was reported. The balloon of 
'/ Santos-Dumont VI." was to weigh 242 pounds, in- 
stead of 264 pounds, and be tougher withal. It was 
to be ready by September. His workpeople kept 
their word ; and it is indeed surprising how fortunate 
Santos-Dumont has been in this respect. In the 
days of the early pioneers the difficulties encountered 
in their dealings with workpeople concerned in the 
construction of their balloons were soul-saddening 
and fatal to all but the truly patient or burningly 
enthusiastic. Our modern '' King of the Air " has 
been happily spared these worries, his assistants 
vieing with each other in helping forward the success 
of his experiments. 

On Friday morning, September 6th, Seiior Santos- 
Dumont made a trial trip with his new airship, 
the occasion being again marked by a mishap. In 
the presence of a large assemblage of enthusiasts 

95 



(^6 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

he mounted to a height of i6o feet, and moving with 
great rapidity, crossed the Seine. The spectators 
were absolutely amazed by the speed attained, and 
by the perfect control over the aerostat which Santos- 
Dumont manifested. While they were still wonder- 
ing, the balloon was suddenly seen to stop, the drag- 
rope being hauled taut. It was soon found that 
the rope was knotted about a tree in the park of the 
Chateau de Boulogne, belonging to Baron Rothschild. 

This necessitated a rapid descent. Without 
alighting, Santos-Dumont discovered that the wooden 
frame was strained, requiring an immediate return 
to the shed. Still remaining in the basket, the 
aeronaut superintended the towing of the balloon 
back to the Aero Club grounds. On the way the 
rope caught in the telegraph wires, and the balloon 
collided with a house. This necessitated its deflation, 
and on descending the framework was broken. 

This new mishap involved more delay and further 
improvements. Meanwhile a discussion arose as to 
the conditions of the Deutsch prize. The Aero Club 
somewhat suddenly decided that airships competing 
for it would be considered to have started as soon 
as their guide-rope had been released, and to have 
arrived as soon as it had been caught again. Against 
this new condition the Brazilian aeronaut publicly 
protested, arguing that on a racecourse the time is 
taken when the jockey passes the post, and not when, 
having stopped his mount, he hands his reins to the 
boys. Similarly the balloon ought to be reckoned 
as having arrived as soon as it is above the ground. 
In all such trials the winning-point is the crossing of 



ANOTHER FAILURE. 97 

an imaginary line. On the other hand, Commandant 
Renard, Director of the French War Office Balloon 
Establishment, and who is celebrated for having, in 
1884, built a balloon which it is said was capable 
of being steered, maintained that the conditions of 
the Deutsch prize w^ere much too easy. If he had 
not been a government servant and debarred from 
entering private competitions, he could have won the 
prize (so he said) with his " France," as she was 
in 1884. He criticised Santos-Dumont's airship as 
very imperfect. " It is lacking in all the secondary 
qualities necessary. It is not stable, and cannot be 
steered scientifically. But, for all that, M. Santos- 
Dumont's pluck and ability are to be admired." 
M. Roze's airship also he considered too complicated, 
and thought that the future was with the " heavier- 
than-air " machine. 

The Brazilian aeronaut was soon making fresh 
ascents and trial trips. On the afternoon of 
Wednesday, September i8th, he made several captive 
ascents, and remained nearly an hour in the air, per- 
forming evolutions in all directions. It was then 
stated that his new rudder, double the size of the 
old one, had much more grip on the air, and enabled 
the airship to be easily steered in a circle. There 
were certain failures in the motor during the ascents, 
but they were not of a serious character, and some 
slight repairs were expected to put everything into 
perfect working order. 

His next attempt for the prize took place on the 
morning of Friday, October iith, and resulted, once 
more, in failure. Yet was everything in his favour, 

7 



98 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

the weather being ideal and the machinery apparently 
in perfect working order. Amid cheers the aerostat 
mounted skyward, but the drag-rope had scarcely 
cleared the ground when it was seen that the rudder 
refused to work, and a moment later the undaunted 
Brazilian brought his ship to earth. 

"What's wrong?" cried a multitude of voices. 
But Seiior Santos-Dumont himself did not know. 
Soon afterwards he discovered that one of the 
bamboo rods supporting the guide wires had broken. 
The airship was taken into the shed, and an hour 
later emerged with the rod replaced, and shot up into 
the air pointing to the Eiffel Tower. 

It travelled at tremendous speed, says an eye- 
witness, and every one shouted, " He'll do it ! " Over 
the Bois de Boulogne the ship was seen to point 
obliquely upwards, change direction, and descend 
rapidly. It was clear that something again was 
wrong. The airship landed on the Longchamps 
racecourse, where investigation revealed tangled guide- 
ropes and other obstacles to progress ; so, saving 
some short experimental spins, the remainder of the 
afternoon was spent in making repairs. 

Further trials took place, and on Monday, 
October 14th, Santos-Dumont made his twenty-fifth 
ascent, flying, for the first time, the French flag. He 
spent the greater part of the hour and forty minutes in 
flying hither and thither, over arfd^around the course 
at Longchamps, keeping all the ^time within the 
railing until he returned to St. Cloud, and never 
rising high in the air, as the upper currents were 
unfavourable. 



SANTOS-DUMOIS'T'S FINAL ATTEMPT. 



99 



The Paris correspondent of the Times, who from 
the first took great interest in the work of the 
BraziHan aeronaut, writing of this clay's manoeuvres, 
says : 

'' It was evident beyond all dispute that an enormous 
step had been taken towards the conquest of the 
air. The balloon, Hke a bird trained to obey the 
human voice, executed all these movements with 




THE " SANTOS-DUMONT VII. 



wonderful precision, turning round, advancing rapidly, 
returning rapidly — in short, acting like an intelligent 
being having the mastery of its own movements." 

Five days later — Saturday, October 19th — will ever 
be remembered as a red-letter day in the annals of 
aerial navigation. At noon the weather was cloudy, 
though calm, and inclined towards rain. But two 
hours later the aeronaut was ready for his great 
enterprise, and set off on one more brave effort to 

L.ofa 



lOO THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

round the Eiffel Tower. After a false start, in which 
he cleverly avoided an accident, he set out at 
2.42 p.m., the Marquis de Dion acting as timekeeper. 

The memorable performance is admirably described 
in the words of the Daily News correspondent : 

" Despite the wind on his starboard beam, M. 
Santos-Dumont headed straight for the tower, which 
was clearly visible. The machine flew acro.^s the 
Seine, keeping as straight as an arrow. It gradually 
rose, also keeping in line, however, with the goal. As 
it came abreast of the tower it seemed a little speck. 
The spectators in the park cheered. M. Santos- 
Dumont had performed the outward journey of three 
miles and a half in nine minutes. Just then the 
balloon was seen to swerve, as if buffeted by the wind 
against which it was struggling. However, the Eiffel 
Tower was safely rounded at the level of the third 
platform and at a distance of eighty yards. 

" On the return journey the airship had the wind 
three-quarters against it. Suddenly it came to a 
standstill. The spectators at St. Cloud spent ten 
minutes of harrowing uncertainty. The propeller 
had got out of order. M. Santos-Dumont was but 
5,000 yards from the tower, and the wind was 
blowing him against it at the rate of six yards a 
second. M. Santos-Dumont, a hero in his way, 
kept his head level. He has, indeed, never been 
known to lose his presence of mind in danger. He 
let go the rudder ropes, crawled along the slender 
framework, and set right the * carburetter ' and electric 
lever, which had stopped working. The motor was 
all right again. But not a minute too soon. The 



"victory! victory!*' ioi 

airship had drifted somewhat out of its course, and 
had bccrun to f<ill. M. Santos-Dumont threw out a few 
handsful of sand. A slight pitching movement was 
observable, and gave rise to some anxiety. Suddenly 
the sound of cheering came from the Auteuil race- 
course, a long way off. A horse-race had just been 
run, but the crowd were looking at the balloon over 
their heads. The rest of the home journey was 
smooth, and, in fact, the engine worked better than 
it had ever done. But for the two hitches above 
mentioned, the return journey would have been 
accomplished in a fraction over eight minutes, an 
even better record than the outward journey, although 
the wind was now blowing the wrong way. As it was, 
twenty-nine minutes and thirty seconds had elapsed 
between the start and the arrival over the grounds 
at St. Cloud. The airship, however, carried on by 
its own impetus, passed over the park. M. Santos- 
Dumont brought her sharply round, a very fine 
manoeuvre. His guide-rope trailed on the ground, 
being caught by one of his workmen. 

*'The Brazilian aeronaut's sympathisers were wild 
with enthusiasm, and called out ' Victory ! Victory ! ' 
M. Santos-Dumont's features lighted up. He looked 
round the circle of friends, and inquired, ' Have I 
really won? Tell me! Tell me!' M. Deutsch came 
up, and hugged M. Santos-Dumont, remarking, ' My 
own view is that you have won the prize, but you 
are a few seconds over the time.' M. Santos-Dumont 
was pale and speechless. The Marquis de Dion 
coming up, watch in hand, addressed him, * My friend, 
you have missed the prize by forty seconds.' This 



102 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

aroused cries of dissent from the crowd. The Marquis 
de Dion rephed, * We have to go by the regula- 
tions.' M. Santos-Dumont remarked, ' I know I have 
won the prize, and if I do not get it I will not try 
for it again. Not I, but the poor of Paris, will be 
the losers.* * Since you talk of the poor,' said M. 
Deutsch, * I offer you ;^i,ooo for them,' but M. Santos- 
Dumont rejected this offer with scorn." 

To cut a long story short, the young Brazilian 
had really won the prize. He had at last succeeded 
in fulfilling all the essential conditions, despite the 
fact that it was not until November 4th, when the 
whole subject had been thoroughly thrashed out in 
heated discussion, that the committee of the Aero 
Club, by a majority of thirteen to nine, awarded him 
the coveted prize, a decision of which M. Deutsch 
cordially approved. So the poor of Paris benefited to 
the extent of £2^00, and a similar sum was divided 
among Seiior Santos-Dumont's faithful workmen. 

Had his achievement solved the question of steer- 
ing a balloon ? That point will be discussed in its 
proper place, the purpose of the present chapter 
being merely to record facts. 

Meanwhile we cannot pass from the story of this 
never-to-be-forgotten day without recording the 
aeronaut's impressions of his famous trip. He con- 
fessed that same evening that he had not been afraid 
at any time, but was awed, and for just a single instant 
he felt doubtful of final success. But he cast aside all 
doubt w^hen, in a flash of thought, the whole of his 
balloon arrangements presented themselves to his 
mind. Then he not only hoped, but felt confident 



SANTOS-DUMONT^S PROJECTS. IO3 

Hailed *' King of the Air," awarded a gift of £1 1,000 
by the Brazihan Government, naturally proud of the 
lustre which he had shed on his country's name, 
Sefior Santos-Dumont, at the end of 1901, was 
assuredly the man of the moment. In November 
he visited London and was cordially received. He 
was full of projects, infinitely more daring than his 
trip round the Eiffel Tower. Nothing short of a 
genuine tour " Round the World in a Balloon " will 
satisfy his ambition. 

His first attempt this year was to have been a 
flight from Monaco across the Mediterranean to 
Algiers. His early experiments at the beginning of 
the year were favourable enough ; but in February 
he suffered a second shipwreck in the air and fell 
plump into the Bay of Monaco ! Again his luck 
stood him in good stead, and he emerged from the 
disaster like Claudian from the earthquake ! 

It remains to be seen, how^ever, whether he can 
out-do his feat of rounding the Eiffel Tower with 
an aerial machine that is admittedly very imperfect 
in principle and detail, and of a type which is never 
likely to prove of any real service in the navigation 
of the sky. For, after all is said, it is very obvious 
that in unfavourable atmospheric conditions airships 
such as those with w^hich Santos-Dumont has ex- 
perimented cannot be relied upon. Yet it will not 
be denied that this ingenious Brazilian has rendered 
an immense service to aeronautics by awakening 
universal interest in the problem of steering a 
machine through the air. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Scientific Ballooning — The Colour of the Sky — Effects of 
Height — Air-currents, etc. 

It is sometimes asked, " What good would it be to 
the world if the North Pole were found ? " It is 
a natural question, for the average man is no scientist 
and he fails to understand the great principles of 
the earth's laws which would be settled by the dis- 
covery of the Pole. Similarly, the fact that when 
Montgolfier floated his first balloon he had placed 
a magnificent instrument in the hands of science 
was not realised for some time, and has not yet been 
made the most of Still, few people are aware how 
largely science has benefited by the balloon, though 
many large works have been written about scientific 
discoveries resulting from ascents into the higher 
regions of the air. In this chapter we propose to 
glance briefly at some of these additions to know- 
ledge, and to show how^ much the science of 
meteorology has profited by the aerial explorations 
of such men as Gay-Lussac, James Glaisher, Camille 
Flammarion, and others. 

A hundred and fifty years ago comparatively little 
was known about the fascinating cloudland from 
which the roll of thunder and the lightning flash 

104 



EXPERIMENTS IN THE HIGH AIR. IO5 

occasionally come to remind us of the wonders that 
God has worked up there. To-day, while there is 
still much to learn, many of the phenomena of the 
upper atmosphere are as fully understood as those 
of the atmosphere we breathe every moment of our 
lives. 

Gay-Lussac, the celebrated French chemist, was 
one of the first and the most noteworthy of the 
early scientific explorers of the atmospheric ocean. 
A whole chapter might be devoted to his observa- 
tions, but we must be content with a very brief 
summary, based on the particulars given by Monck 
Mason in his valuable Aeronaittica. In company with 
M. Biot, another French philosopher of like celebrity, 
he ascended from the Conservatoire des Arts, in 
Paris, August 23rd, 1804, with a view to instituting 
experiments in various branches of the physical 
sciences. At an elevation of about 11,000 feet they 
let go one of the birds with which they had been 
provided ; for a moment it rested upon the edge of 
the car ; then, launching into the deep abyss, directed 
its course in gradually extended circles towards the 
earth ; thereby refuting an erroneous opinion generally 
prevalent that the rarity of the atmosphere in such 
elevated situations was incompatible with the exercise 
of their natural functions. 

Upon letting down a wire of about 2C0 feet in 
length the explorers obtained, by means of the 
elcctrophorus indications of negative electricity from 
its upper extremity, a result which appears strongly 
to confirm the opinion given by Volta and Saussure 
regarding the increase of the electric matter in the 



I06 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

superior regions of the sky. Having obtained an 
elevation of about 13,000 feet without being able to 
discover anything further worthy of especial record, 
they descended. 

The results of this experiment not having realised 
the expectations of the scientific in Paris, owing 
chiefly to the limitation which the weight they 
carried imposed upon their ascent, it was resolved 
to make another attempt, in which Gay-Lussac 
should go up alone. Accordingly, on September 15th, 
in the same year, that gentleman again ascended 
from the same place, and the results of this experi- 
ment are much more important to science than those 
just recorded. At an elevation of 9,929 feet the 
oscillations of the horizontal needle appear to have 
been considerably accelerated ; giving a result of 
twenty in eighty-three, although on earth the same 
number would have required 84'33. The variation, 
as far as his means would enable him to determine, 
appeared at the height of 12,651 feet to be exactly 
the same as below. 

At the height of about 5,000 feet, we are told that 
two large glass balloons, which had been previously 
exhausted of air, were opened for the purpose of 
subjecting to analysis a portion of the atmosphere 
abstracted from such an elevation. The result of 
this inquiry proved no difference whatever in the 
composition of the atmosphere at that elevation. 

Having reached a height of 22,977 feet above the 
level of the sea, and almost all his ballast having 
been already disposed of, he considered it prudent 
to arrest his further progress. The appearance of 



FROM GAY-LUSSAC TO GLAISHER. ID/ 

the sky at this, the extreme point of his ascent, was 
particularly interesting ; the colour, especially about 
the zenith, being comparable only to a fine shade of 
Prussian blue, while, notwithstanding his excessive 
elevation, he could still perceive the clouds in con- 
siderable abundance floating at an apparently 
measurable distance above his head. The tempera- 
ture had fallen as low as lyi Fahrenheit. Although 
well clothed, he now began to suffer from the effects 
of the cold, especially in his hands, which he was 
obliged to keep exposed and constantly employed 
in handling the various instruments necessary in 
making observations. His respiration, likewise, he 
describes as being sensibly affected, and, as well as 
his pulse, considerably accelerated ; not so much, 
however, as to occasion him any great inconvenience, 
or to render it necessary for him to precipitate his 
descent. 

These were the earliest scientific observations made 
at this height, and since then many of Gay-Lussac's 
conclusions have been modified, due mainly to the 
great advance that has been made in the construction 
of scientific instruments. 

For nearly half a century the scientific study of 
the upper atmosphere was practically neglected, and 
the next ascents of any great importance were under- 
taken by Barval and Bixio in 1850, when they reached 
the same height as Gay-Lussac — about 23,000 feet. 
Then came the most famous of all the scientific 
ascents — those accomplished by James Glaisher in 
1862-66, which are especially interesting to English- 
men, since he was a countryman of ours. 




u 

o 



THE USE OF THE ANEROID. IO9 

Doubt has been cast recently on some of Glaisher's 
observations, and the capacity of his instruments 
has been questioned. He himself has recorded that 
"the first aneroid barometer which I had made for 
these observations read correctly at thirty inches, 
ando'i inch too high at twenty-five inches ; the error 
increased to 07 inch at fourteen inches, but de- 
creased to 0'5 inch at eleven inches. A second aneroid 
barometer read very nearly the same as the 
mercurial barometer from thirty inches to twelve 
inches range. A third, graduated down to five inches, 
and most carefully made and tested under the air 
pump before use, read the same as the mercurial 
barometer throughout the high ascent up to seven 
miles on September 5th, 1862. I have taken this 
instrument up with me on every subsequent ascent, 
and it has always read the same as the mercurial 
barometer. These experiments prove that an aneroid 
can be made to read correctly at low pressure." From 
this it will be seen that to question the results he 
arrived at is quite unjustifiable ; but, indeed, all 
scientists of authority are willing to concede that 
Glaisher's observations are thoroughly trustworthy. 

There will always be different experiences in 
respect to purely physical effects on the individual, 
and, as we have already seen, one man may feel no 
difficulty of breathing where another is gasping for 
breath ; in fact, one man may die in conditions from 
which another emerges with his life. " At six and 
seven miles high, I experienced the limit of our 
power of breathing in the attenuated atmosphere," 
says Glaisher ; and he points out the great difference 



no THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

between climbing a mountain and soaring aloft in 
a balloon. The energy expended in the one case 
brings an earlier consciousness of the rarefied air 
than in the other, where no energy is expended in 
making the ascent. 

In the chapter on *' Famous Aerial Voyages " we 
have already learned the effect of height which 
Glaisher experienced when upwards of 29,000 feet 
above the earth. To this may be added now the 
following interesting observations made by Glaisher 
and recorded by him in his volume, Travels in 
tJie Air : 

"In this ascent six pigeons were taken up. One 
was thrown out at the height of three miles, when 
it extended its wings, and dropped like a piece of 
paper ; the second, at four miles, flew vigorously 
round and round, apparently taking a dip each time ; 
a third was thrown out between four and five miles, 
and it fell downwards as a stone. A fourth was 
thrown out at four miles on descending ; it flew in 
a circle, and shortly alighted on the top of the balloon. 
The two remaining pigeons were brought down to 
the ground. One was found to be dead ; and the 
other, a carrier, was still living, and would not leave 
the hand when I attempted to throw it off, till, after 
a quarter of an hour, it began to peck at a piece of 
ribbon with which its neck was encircled ; it was 
then jerked off the finger, and shortly afterwards 
flew with some vigour towards Wolverhampton. 
One of the pigeons returned to Wolverhampton on 
Sunday, the 7th, and was the only one I ever heard of. 

"In this ascent, on passing out of the clouds there 



THE PHENOMENA OF CLOUDS. Ill 

was an increase of nine degrees, and then there was 
no interruption in the decrease of temperature till 
the height of 15,000 feet was reached, when a warm 
current of air was entered, which continued to 24,000 
feet, after which the regular decrease of tem.perature 
continued to the highest point reached. On descend- 
ing, the same current w^as again met with, between 
22,000 and 23,000 feet. A similar interruption, but 
to a greater amount, was experienced till the balloon 
had descended to about the same height in which 
it was reached on ascending, and after this no further 
break occurred in the regular increase of temperature, 
the sky being clear till the descent was completed. 
From the general agreement of the results as observed 
by Regnault's hygrometer, and those of the dew- 
point as found by the dry and wet bulb thermomicters, 
there can be no doubt that the temperature of the 
dew-point, at heights exceeding 30,000 feet, must 
have been as low as minus fifty degrees below the 
zero of Fahrenheit's scale, or eighty-two degrees 
below the freezing-point of water, implying that the 
air w^as very dry.'' 

Glaisher notes many interesting points about clouds, 
agreeing with Xasmyth in thinking that flat-bottom 
clouds are resting on a stratum of air which is press- 
ing them upwards, so that when we see such clouds 
in the sky w^e know that rain is unlikely. ]\Iason 
noticed, and others have agreed with him, that when 
a balloon ascends into a rainy region it will be found, 
on soaring through the clouds from w^hich the rain is 
falling, that another rainy region has been entered, a 
second series of clouds being in the act of condensing. 



112 



THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 



From which it would appear that when we have 
rain it is not merely from the clouds immediately 
above us condensing, but because a series of clouds 
still higher is also doing so. 

Nearly every scientist who has practised ballooning 
has remarked that the earth as seen from aloft gives 
no clue to its convex shape, but really appears to 
be concave, as if the balloon were soaring above a 
vast hollow. It is also worthy of note that distance 
does not render objects on the earth obscure, but 




DIAGRAM SHOWING HOW THE EARTH IS SEEN FROM A BALLOON. 

Owing to the power of refraction exercised by the atmosphere, 
the eyesight, instead of travelling direct to the objects as shown 
by the dotted lines, sees these raised higher, as shown by the 
plain lines, but still accurately as to distance. Hence the concave 
appearance of the earth from a balloon. Aeronauts have also ex- 
perienced the delusion that it was only a step down to the earth 
when they have been hundreds of feet in the air. 

intensifies their outline, until they become so minute 
that they finally disappear. Thus, when the pier 
at Calais seemed " no bigger than a match,'' observers 
from a balloon could still distinguish the people 
clustered on it. Bodies falling from a balloon have 
always been a favourite subject of experiment. At 
great heights a feather and a cannon ball fall with 
equal velocity, until they arrive in air which offers 



THE COLOUR OF THE SKY. II3 

a stronger resistance to the one than to • the other 
But the force with which the central gravity of the 
earth attracts them is the same in each case. Again, 
a falHng body maintains the same horizontal inclina- 
tion as that of the car from which it is dropped. 
Flammarion let a bottle fall from his balloon, and 
until it disappeared from sight it was seen *^ perpen- 
dicularly beneath the car," proving that Galileo's 
theory is right, for if the bottle had taken on an 
action of its own it would have followed an oblique 
line from the balloon, as the latter was moving at a 
considerable speed. 

Here, again, is an interesting point : no air is felt 
in a balloon. Everything is deathly still, though the 
wind may be blowing a hurricane, for the balloon 
moves in the wind and is really a part of the blast. 

Camille Flammarion has 5ome important remarks 
on the colour of the sky as seen from a balloon. 
He writes : 

" I shall teach nothing to my readers by in- 
forming them that the blue celestial vault has no 
real existence. The air reflects the blue rays of the 
solar spectrum from every side. The white light 
of the sun contains every colour, and the air allows 
all tints to pass through it except the blue, which it 
appears to choose specially, and to reflect in every 
direction. This causes us to suppose that the 
atmosphere is blue. But the air has no such colour, 
and the tint in question is merely owing to the 
reflection of light. If the air were blue in reality, 
distant mountains covered with snow would, as 
Saussure once remarked, certainly appear blue ; 



114 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

but this is not found to be the case. The air is colour- 
less, but it is not absolutely transparent, since it retains 
and reflects the blue rays of the solar light. 

" Planetary space is absolutely black. The higher 
we rise towards this external space, the thinner is 
the layer of atmosphere which separates it from us, 
and the darker the sky appears. At a height of 
9,843 feet, we have passed through more than one- 
third of the atmosphere, as far as weight is concerned. 
It is, therefore, not surprising that the air above us 
should appear so dark, and that this shade should 
naturally decrease towards our horizon. The de- 
crease of moisture adds its effect also in diminishing 
the intensity of the blue tint above." 

Much of interest miight be written about the 
phenomena of clouds, but to deal with such subjects 
and especially in a ^' popular " way, requires more 
space than we can spare. So with many other 
aspects of scientific research in the upper atmosphere. 
Ikit mention should be made of the curious shadow 
sometimes cast by a balloon, noted by Flammarion 
and other scientists. This takes the form of a 
silhouette of the balloon, shown on the cloud bed 
beneath, with a brilliant halo of rainbow colours all 
around it. The latter is supposed to be caused by 
the refraction of light from the tiny globules of 
water condensed on the covering of the balloon. 
Flammarion has also recorded that he saw the 
shadow of his balloon "luminous" on the earth, 
though few aeronauts have noted this ; De P^onvielle 
indeed, asserting that light does not pass through 
a balloon. 



SENSATIONS OF A BALLOON ASCENT. II5 

. Many explanations have been put forward s to 
why people experience no feeling of giddiness when 
soaring through the clouds. Almost any one cjuld 
stand on the edge of the car and look down wi.hout 
the least sensation of vertigo. The most plau ible 
theory of this is, that in the car of a balloon cie 
looks up to the balloon and thinks of tliat rather than 
of the earth beneath. On the other hand, in a captive 
balloon there is more chance of giddiness when one 
looks at the cable by which it is held, and involuntarily 
regards that as the sole means of safety. But this 
peculiar fact has never been satisfactorily explained, 
and it will be noticed that even Flammarion in the 
following passage from the story of his first ascent 
makes no attempt to do so : 

'^ The feelings of an aeronaut during a b illoon 
ascent are almost impossible to describe. To the 
contentmient of finding oneself floating high above the 
miseries of mankind is added the feeling of a strange 
and absolute calmness, such as is never experienced 
upon the earth. I myself never felt any giddiness, 
but my companion. Count Branicki, was affected 
by it from the moment w^e left the earth until we 
had passed over Villeneuve-St.-Georges. There 
appears, however, to be something imaginary about 
this ; for the very time that the count should have 
experienced giddiness — that is, when he consented 
to look down upon the earth — the feeling left him. 
If the sides of the car had not rendered the thing 
quite impossible, our companion would certainly have 
allowed himself to be drawn down to the soil of 
France. I may add that, without having experienced 



Il6 THE CONQUEST OE THE AIR. 

this disease of vision, I also felt a vague desire to 
throw myself out of the balloon. Though feeling 
convinced that it would be certain death, I was under 
the influence of a mild temptation to allow myself 
to fall, and my death became for the moment a 
matter of indifference to me. But, happily to those 
who travel in balloons, it is a species of temptation 
which there is no difficulty in resisting. These 
sensations are, I hope, confined to aerial navigation.'' 
The Rev. J. M. Bacon has made many experiments, 
which must be mentioned in any sketch of scientific 
ballooning. His experiments in connection with 
acoustics have been particularly interesting, and were 
carried out by means of many ingenious instruments. 
As one writer has pointed out, Mr. Bacon's discoveries 
are likely to be extremely useful in the near future 
to sailors and to lighthouse-keepers, who constantly 
insist on the uncertainty of the audibility of the 
sound of a bell at sea. On one occasion, when 
making a balloon ascent from Newbury, Mr. Bacon 
caused the tenor bell of Hatcham Church, weighing 
upwards of a ton, and distant about three miles to 
windward, to be set ringing as in peal. The wind 
was a light breeze, and the balloon maintained 
altitudes varying between I, coo and 3,coo feet, yet 
th : bell was inaudible to each and all of the four 
observers in the car. On the other hand, it must 
b: noted that Messrs. Mears, the well-known bell- 
founders, record the fact that the tenor bell of the 
peal of St. Bees, on the coast of Cumberland, has 
been heard at the top of Scafell Pikes, sixteen miles 
distant in a straight line. Mr. Bacon has also 



BREATHING AT GREAT HEIGHTS. 



117 



achieved some excellent results in photographing 
from a balloon. 

To discover the difficir.ties that confront man in the 
higher atmosphere is only to set inventive genius at 




CAILETET S APPARATUS FOR BREATHING AT GREAT ALTITUDES. 



work, and quite recently a Frenchman, named Cailetet, 
has invented a device for supplying the aeronaut 
with the needful oxygen in a more convenient way 
than the old-fashioned plan of inhaling it through 
a tube. His contrivance may yet prove of great 
use to scientists who wish to penetrate even higher 



Il8 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

than Glaisher went, and is thus described by its 
inventor : 

" The apparatus which I have devised for the 
purpose of overcoming this difficulty consists of a 
double glass bottle, which contains liquid oxygen, and 
which is closed by a stopper, through wliich two 
tubes pass. One of the tubes ends above the suiface 
of the oxygen, and it is provided upon the outside 
with a rubber weight, by means of which it is able to 
exercise atmospheric pressure on the liquefied gas. 
The second tube is of lead, and descends to the 
bottom of the oxygen, while its other end is con- 
nected with a vaporiser, or small and very light 
tubular boiler, which is fashioned of seven copper 
tubes communicating with each other. 

" As copper is a great conductor of heat, the liquid 
oxygen, through the action of the weight, quickly 
becomes gaseous, and passes into a cylindrical rubber 
reservoir, which may be fixed in some part of the 
balloon. With this reservoir, containing about 
seventy litres of oxygen, is connected the flexible 
tube, through which the gas reaches the breathing 
apparatus. This apparatus is a sort of metallic 
mask, which is protected outside with, velvet, so 
that it may not become chilled. It covers only 
the nose and mouth, and is fastened to the face 
by means of elastic bands. The oxygen which comes 
from the rubber cylinder penetrates into a mask 
through a flexible tube, which, when once placed into 
position, should not be stirred. In this way the 
absorption of the gas is assured, and the oxygen is 
obliged to penetrate into the lungs." 



AIR CURRENTS. II9 

The great quest of all scientists who have interested 
themselves in aeronautics is ^' the gulf stream of the 
air." The study of air currents is a most fascinating 
one, and touches a subject on which the best informed 
are still very ignorant. Some believe that in the 
upper atmosphere there exist currents as regular as 
the trade w^inds and the gulf stream, but no one has 
been able yet to define any of these, though their 
discovery would mean an enormous advance in 
ballooning. At one elevation a current may be 
blowing in a certain direction, but higher up the air 
may be travelling to the opposite point of the compass. 
This has been proved many times ; and if it were 
possible to know at w^hat elevation an aeronaut 
would find a current blowing in the. direction he 
w ished to be carried, then would the art of ballooning 
be immensely simplified and perfected. In a charac- 
teristic passage Gaston Tissandier writes : 

'' What should we know of the ocean if a few 
sailors only had navigated at a short distance from 
the coasts, without losing sight of port? Should 
we ever have had any notion of the vast currents 
that flow^ regularly from the poles to the equator, 
and reciprocally counter-balancing the heat of the one 
and the cold of the other ? Should we ever have 
become acquainted with those vast fields of seaweed, 
those shoals of madrepores, or the regions of calm ? 
Where would now have been the bases of the physical 
geography of the sea? The same argument applies 
to the gaseous ocean in the depths of which we live. 
Now that the telegraph has united all the nations of the 
earth, why do we not at once undertake simultaneous 



120 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

balloon ascents at given periods of the year? Why 
should we not explore those higher regions system- 
atically, and endeavour to discover the tides of the 
air ? 

'^ In our last ascent but one we rose into a heated 
current, the existence of which was not suspected 
by those on the earth's surface. Where did this 
warm river, which flowed for a whole month over the 
clouds, arise ? Where did it derive its heat ? Did 
it come from the tropics? And why is the air so 
calm and stagnant to-day, like the tranquil w^ater 
of an inland lake ? What numbers of grand and 
useful problems arise when we think of the possible 
results of systematic balloon ascents ! " 

According to an American scientist, free balloons 
carrying self-registering meteorological instruments, 
but no observers, promise the greatest usefulness 
in the scientific exploration of the high air. The 
free balloons are now made of gold-beater's skin, and 
weigh less than forty pounds. They are fitted with 
self-registering thermometers and barometers, which 
print the temperature, the humidity, and the atmo- 
spheric pressure at regular intervals, and with a 
machine that throws cards into the air every ten 
minutes, so that the course of the balloon can be 
traced by the cards that are picked up and posted 
to the central office. One of these free balloons, sent 
up by Hermite and Besan^on, reached a height of 
ten miles, and others sent up by Dr. Assmann, of 
Berlin, have ascended to heights above eleven miles. 

The same writer points out that the rate at which 
temperature diminishes with increasing altitude is a 



FREE BALLOONS AND KITES. 121 

very important datum to meteorologists. On the 
average it falls off one degree Fahrenheit for every in- 
crease of 3 1 3 feet in altitude. The allowance to be made 
for astronomical refraction depends directly upon 
this quantity. Changes in humidity, in the velocity 
of the upper winds, in atmospheric electricity, etc., 
are likewise registered in balloon ascents, and the 
physiological effect of high altitudes upon the ob- 
servers is a matter of scientific importance. The air 
inside the body and outside of it are at different pres- 
sures, and above 20,000 feet *' mountain sickness " is 
always felt. 

We have already learned that at 26,000 feet 
Tissandier, in 1875, fell in a swoon, and when he 
awoke he found his two companions dead beside 
him. Dr. Berson, the German aeronaut, required 
frequent inhalations of pure oxygen above 20,000 feet 
to give relief, and at heights above 26,000 feet 
nothing but oxygen was breathed. The cold of the 
upper regions of the air is often intense. A rise of 
31,000 feet corresponds to a fall of temperature 
approaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Our American authority would, therefore, seem to 
be right in his conclusion, that to the free balloon 
meteorologists must trust for data concerning the 
highest air ; balloons carrying observers w^ill explore 
the middle regions, and the modern scientific kites 
will serve to carry self-registering instruments to 
heights approaching two miles. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

The Balloon in War — Its Use in the Past — Probable Develop- 
ment — For Signalling — Firing a Mine from a Balloon. 

It is generally stated that the military use of the 
balloon was first realised during the American Civil 
War ; but this is far from being correct. As a matter 
of fact, the balloon had no sooner been proved 
practical than military men began to consider how 
they could apply this new invention to their purposes ; 
and it is on record that the Battle of Fleurus, in 1794, 
was won by the French because of observations 
signalled from a captive balloon, which remained 
up all day. Military balloons were employed at 
Antwerp in 1815, and at Solferino in 1850. 

It was at Solferino that the great value of the 
military balloon was placed beyond doubt. Says 
the Times correspondent in his account of the action 
which ultimately decided the issue of the war : 

'' The Emperor of the French, representing the 
juvenile irregular force, refused to be surprised ; he 
sent a man up in a balloon, and, at the expense of a 
few yards of silk and a few cubic feet of gas, is told 
the exact position of all those mass.es which are drawn 
up so scientifically out of his sight with the intention 
of surprising him at the comfortable, leisurely hour 



NArOLEONS I. AND III. AND BALLOONS. 1 23 

of 9 a.m., Napoleon III. attacks at daybreak, chooses 
his own time, and remains master of the field." 

During the siege of Paris by the Germans the 
French sent out more than sixty balloons carrying 
passengers, letters, and despatches. The carrier 
pigeons taken out returned bearing other despatches 
in reply. Captive balloons were employed by the 
French at Tonquin, by the United States in Cuba, 
and by the British in South Africa, with more or less 
success. But, as a scientific writer on the subject 
has observed, the ideal military balloon is the airship. 
It must be dirigible, easily mianoeuvrcd, safe, and 
capable of flying at any height and in any direction, 
even against strong winds. 

It is interesting to note how Napoleon made 
use of Montgolfier's invention after the taking of 
Cairo in 1798, when he endeavoured to impress the 
vanquished Egyptians by sending up a fire-balloon 
after he had made a speech ! The device was a 
failure, as only the French followed the flight of the 
balloon. Napoleon curiously failed to appreciate 
the true use of the balloon, for, as M. de Fonvielle 
has aptly pointed out, if he had had among the 
Imperial baggage when the day of Waterloo dawned 
such a balloon as had been used at Fleurus twenty 
years before, he would not have made the fatal error 
of '' mistaking Blucher for Grouchy." 

Very little progress, indeed, has been made in 
military ballooning, despite the fact that there are 
only three directions in which it is possible to experi- 
ment. First, by using captive balloons for making 
observations of the evening's pcsition ; secondly, for 



124 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

signalling purposes ; and lastly, by using air-ships 
for communicating across a zone of country in the 
hands of an enemy, or for dropping explosives upon 
the latter. 

Naturally, the French have always been the leaders 
in military ballooning, and ihe aerial escape of 
Gambetta from Paris during the siege is one of the 
most famous exploits of the kind. Commandant 
Renard, who is still at the head of the French war 
balloon service, was the hero of the siege. His 
balloon was cigar-shaped, with a screw propeller 
driven by a dynamo-electric machine, and steered 
with a large rudder, all the machinery being placed 
in a boat-shaped wicker-work car 150 feet in length. 

Renard claimed a complete success for his inven- 
tion ; he w^as able to follow the route he had 
previously mapped out, and by putting the helm 
about, turned his balloon in less than a thousand 
feet. The mean speed attained was twelve and a 
half miles an hour, so that the machine could only 
be manoeuvred when the wind's velocity w^as not 
excessive. The latest PVench w^ar balloon goes at 
double this speed ; while in 1889 M. Hermite travelled 
from St. Denis to the mouth of the Rhone in fifteen 
hours, a rate equal to that of an express train, not- 
withstanding the fact that he never escaped from 
the clouds during his journey. 

Such progress as has been made since then has 
been achieved mainly by the French ; and now that 
both the Russian and French navies have realised the 
utility of the balloon for purposes of warfare, their 
armies are no longer the only branch of the service 



BRITISH MILITARY BALLOONING. 1 25 

boasting an aeronautical section. The balloons are 
held captive in the ordinary manner, and are con- 
nected by telephone with the battleship below. A 
balloon section has been attached to the Medi- 
terranean Squadron of the French navy for some 
time past, and has been employed with conspicuous 
success for scouting purposes. As we write, the 
Russians are carrying on experiments on the Caspian 
Sea, and if they consider that the balloon establishes 
its utility for naval scouting, a balloon is to be 
provided for each ship. Balloons for use with 
British w^arships have often been discussed, but, so 
far, no action has been taken. 

The British Army, however, has long had a 
balloon service working in conjunction with the 
telegraph service. The method in which our 
military balloonists work is thus described : ^' The 
balloon is carried in a cart, attached to a huge reel 
of wire cable. When it is desired to ascend the 
balloon is filled with gas from tanks which are carried 
about with the section, and the cable is paid out until 
the officer finds he is high enough. To those who 
have written of the joys of ballooning the military 
balloon w^ould come as an unpleasant surprise, for 
the tiny wicker-basket is less than three feet deep, 
and will hold no more than two men packed like 
sardines. Like all o:her captive balloons, it tugs 
and strains at its rope in a most alarming fashion, 
and the man who ascends for the first time in a 
wind will probably be fearfully sick, and wtU come 
down vowing never to repeat the experience. When 
it is rememxbered that in addition to the difficulty 



126 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

of keeping his balance in the kicking leviathan, the 
aerial observer is expected to take observations of 
the enemy's movements, one can only gaze in ad- 
miration, and wonder how it is that the cheerful- 
looking officers of the balloon-section keep their 
hair from turning white." 

The British balloon service is a branch of the 
Royal Engineers, comprising a depot and six balloon 
sections. The German Army has also a separate 
service ; but Italy has no special balloon corps, 
though we have seen that it was during the Italian 
war, at the Battle of Solferino, when the imm.ense 
service of the balloon was first placed beyond all 
cavil. To five of the Italian regiments of sappers, 
ten companies of train, and a railway brigade of 
six companies, which compose the corps of Engineers 
of the Italian Army, there is attached a " specialist 
company," which undertakes multifarious duties, of 
which ballooning is one. This special company, 
besides the charge of balloons, looks after '' optical 
telegraphy," i.e., long-distance signalling by helio- 
graph, electric, and other lights, and the traction 
engines and carrier pigeons used in the Italian Army. 
The Italian war balloon^, unlike ours, are of the 
" sausage " type, and they were used in the disastrous 
campaign in Erythrea, when Italy's colonial aspira- 
tions were nipped in the bud. 

In the matter of balloon-signalling some most 
successful experiments were made during the French 
Army manoeuvres in the autumn of 1901, when, for 
the first time, balloons were used in signalling instruc- 
tions to the regiments spread over a wide area. T)ie 




BRITISH MILITARY BALLOON READY FOR ASCENT. 
Photo by Argent Archer t Kensington. 



128 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

enormous mass of men engaged, operating over miles 
of country, renders it difficult for the general com- 
manding to convey orders to the whole body of the 
troops with anything like simultaneity. On this 
occasion the military balloons were provided with 
spheres and cones, which, used in various com- 
binations, communicate orders of a purely general 
character. For instance, a single sphere means the 
suspension of operations, a single cone their resump- 
tion, while a sphere and a cone form the sign for 
the conclusion of the action, and the assembly of 
the superior officers for the '^ critique." Along these 
lines the military balloon can render most valuable 
assistance in the controlling of a widely disposed army. 

It has been mentioned that Count de la Vaulx's 
abortive attempt to cross the Mediterranean was, 
tJtter alia, an experiment to test the adaptability 
of the balloon for certain military uses. How the 
mind of the continental strategists is bent at present 
may be gathered from these words of Lieutenant 
Tapissier, who accompanied the count in "La 
Mediterraneen" : 

" There will come a moment when, in the course 
of long hostilities, there will be no longer any unities, 
even the most modest, to sacrifice in order to obtain 
certain indications on which may depend the issue 
of a combat. Take an example from the Cuban 
War. The Americans found themselves one day 
in the most cruel embarrassment. They knew that 
Admiral Cervera's squadron was near them, that it 
might appear at any moment, so that they hesitated, 
undecided. Mountains, which they could not scale, 



GERIMAN MILITARY EXPERIMENT. 



129 



hid the fleet of the enemy. If they had been in 
possession of a balloon, instead of remaining in forced 
inaction, they might, knowing 
their adversary's position, sure of 
his retreat, have steamed after 
him victoriously. The Germans 
so well understand the importance 
of maritime ballooning that their 
experiments have become almost 
. . . disquieting. Have we not seen 
them, in the course of the past 







BALLOON-SIGNALLING IN THE FRENCH ARMY. SIGNAL TO *' CEASE 
FIRING." 

year, over Lake Constance, giving themselves up to 
the most expensive kind of experiments with an 

9 



130 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

automobile balloon, which, had it turned out a suc- 
cess, instead of a failure, might have come pacifically 
but proudly to promenade the German colours in the 
sky above Paris ? " 

In Eno-land we have not altosfether stood still in 

o o 

the matter of experimental military ballooning, though 
strangely enough the most valuable demonstration 
of how aeronautics may become the chief branch of 
military service has been given by one who is a 
follower of the Prince of Peace — the Rev. J. M. 
Bacon, who, in 1900, when accompanied by Admiral 
P'remantle, conducted some remarkable experiments 
in signalling from his balloon with the troops en- 
camped on Salisbury Plain, and again, at the meeting 
of the British Association in Bradford, carried out 
some successful experiments in wireless telegraphy, 
whereby he exploded a mine in the gardens whence 
they had started, when three or four miles distant 
in the sky. 

But, as w^e have said, the simple balloon is limited 
in its scope. If ever aerostats are to become active 
weapons of war, it will be when the secret of steering 
has been finally disclosed. They must be capable 
of answering to the helm and not merely at the 
mercy of the air-currents. Mr. Bacon's experiment 
might Jiave been a failure if the wind had not been 
suitable, and in war there must be no '^ might have 
beens.*' As Lieutenant Tapissier has grimly hinted, 
what military men are after is an airship from 
which it will be possible to drop down deadly 
explosives into "thick peopled cities," or into the 
ranks of an army. Long ago the prophetic mind of 



TENNYSON S VISION OF THE FUTURE. 13I 

Tennyson shadowed forth such a terrible possibUity, 
when he ^* dipt into the future '* and 

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a 

ghastly dew 
From the nation's airy navies grappling in the central blue, 

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south wind rushing 
warm, 

With the standards of the peoples plunging thro' the thunder- 
storm. 

It may be that this new terror will be born fron"! 
the womb of the Twentieth Century, and if it be, 
God grant that the poet's further vision may also 
come true : 

Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle flags 

were furl'd 
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Airships of Yesterday and To-day — Sir Hiram Maxim— Dr. Barton 
— T. H. Bastin — William Beedle— An Austrian Failure, etc. 

To give any adequate sketch of the airship as distinct 
from the balloon would call for a work considerably 
larger in size than the present volume, as there has 
been far more experimenting and far more failure 
in this direction than in ballooning pure and simple. 
We intend for the present to content ourselves with 
a brief survey of the most important schemes now 
before the world for the navigation of airships. 
But a v/ord or two should be said, by way of intro- 
duction, about some of the most famous failures of 
bygone days. 

Perhaps the earliest of all attempts, and not the 
most absurd, was that represented by Francis Lama's 
airship, made, but probably never raised into the 
air, in 1670. Its lifting power was to be four copper 
globes from which the air had been expelled. Any 
schoolboy to-day knows that such a thing would 
be impossible, and instead of having ascensional 
qualities, globes of this kind would be certain to 
collapse from pressure of the outside air. 

Blanchard, who was the first to cross the channel 
in a balloon, claimed, in 1784, to have guided his 

132 



SOME FAMOUS FAILURES. 



133 



aerostat with sails ; but this was never accepted as 
a fact. Monck Mason, in 1843, adapted the screw 
and rudder to an egg-shaped balloon and produced 
something slightly resembling Santos-Dumont's air- 




A NAVIGABLE AIRSHIP OF FIFTY-EIGHT YEARS AGO ! THE FIRST 
STEAM CARRIAGE OF " THE AERIAL TRANSIT COMPANY." 



ship ; but it w^as a failure. In the same year a 
company was actailly formed under the name of 
" The Aerial Transit Company " to do business in 
carrying goods and passengers on navigable airships 
propelled by steam. It was not a brilliant success, 
and its shareholders never handled fat dividends ! Its 



134 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

airship was a weird contrivance in which the principle 
of the aero-plane, the ordinary ship, the tail of a 
bird or fish, and other incompatible things were 
all associated. 

Seven years later, Bell, with an aerostat on very 
similar lines to Monck Mason's, made an ascent from 
Vauxhall Gardens, but with no greater success. The 
same year saw ihe n^ost ludicrous proposal for navi- 









MONCK mason's MODEL AERIAL MACHINE, 1843. 

14 ft. by 6ft. 8 in. high. 

gating the air ever born in the mind of man. It 
was known as ^* Peter's Patent," and is quite beyonJ 
description, so that we can only hope to refer our 
readers to the picture of it (page 146), which speaks 
more eloquently than words. In 1865 Delamarne 
ascended frequently from Cremorne Gardens in an 
'^aerial sailing-balloon," of very ingenious construction, 
with which he had some measure of success. But 



SIR iitra:^! maxims aero-planes. 135 

the only instance of a balloon being steered, previous 
to the most recent achievements, was Comm.andant 
Renard's balloon, in which, as we have mentioned, 
Gambetta escaped from beleagured Paris. 

We have already dealt very fully with Santos- 
Dumont and his airship, so that we may pass at 
once to notice some of his many rivals for the king- 
ship of the sky. We naturally turn first to Sir 

r 




M. delamarne's aerial sailixg-bai loon, '' l'esperance,"' at 

CREMORNE, AUGUST, 1 865. 

Hiram Maxim's flying-m.achine (see frontispiece), 
which exists here in London to-day, and from which 
great things are expected. As we have heard. Sir 
Hiram's airship belongs to the '' heavier-than-air " 
variety, and is thus totally opposed in principle to 
Santos-Dumont's. His great machine consists of a 
scries of aero-planes, somewhat suggestive of a vessel's 
sails, surp'rted above a platform on which the motive 



136 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

power is situated, and between the aero-planes and 
the platform are two immense propellers, which grip 
the air with a forward movement. The principle 
of the machine is, of course, that when the aero-planes, 
which are readily adjustable, are fixed in given posi- 
tions according to the winds, and the propellers are 
in action, the machine rises in the air in the same 
way that a bird raises itself To the eye the Maxim 
machine looks a most workmanlike craft. 

A celebrated scientist has said " the atmosphere 
is solid if you strike it hard enough." So power is 
the great essential in driving the aero-plane, and this 
Sir Hiram Maxim believes he can supply, as will 
be gathered from his own description of his machine : 

" In the early experiments, conducted by myself," 
he writes, " I found that an aero-plane six feet long 
and one foot wide, made sharp at both edges, and 
driven through the air sidewise at a slight angle 
above the horizontal, would carry 133 pounds to the 
horse-power at a velocity of forty miles an hour. 
My early experiments were conducted with a great 
deal of care. I was provided with dynamometers — 
in fact, with a sufficient number of instruments to 
enable me to ascertain exactly the lift of the plane, 
the power consumed, and its velocity through the 
air. Professor Langley at about the same time con- 
ducted similar experiments, but with aero-planes 
about four inches wide, and eight or ten inches long. 
With these small aero-planes, made of metal, the pro- 
fessor succeeded in carrying at the rate of 250 pounds 
to the horse-power. In some later experiments, 
conducted by myself, I found that an aero-plane 



DR. barton's airship. 1 37 

one foot wide, made very sharp at the edges and 
slightly concave on the under side, and placed at only 
a slight angle above the horizontal, had a lifting effect 
eighteen times as great as the tendency to travel with 
the wind -that is, the lift was eighteen times greater 
than the drift. Similar results have also been ob- 
tained by Mr. Horatio Philips. 

" With an aero-plane consisting of woven fabric 
drawn tightly over a frame, I found that only forty 
pounds could be carried with the expenditure cf 
one horse-power. With my large machine, however, 
the results were even wor£e. I was forced to use 
a light framework covered with thin fabric, and in 
order to support this, and to give it the necessary 
stability, a great number of steel braces and wires 
had to be employed, and all these offered great 
resistance to being driven through the air. I finally 
ran up the power to 360 horse-power, and with this 
immense expenditure of energy I succeeded in getting 
a screw thrust of 2,2co pounds, and a lifting effect of 
10,000 pounds. It will therefore be seen that instead 
of lifting eighteen times my screw thrust, as in some 
of my small experiments, I lifted less than five times." 

From this it will be gathered that Sir Hiram 
Maxim's aerial machine is still, in some particulars 
at least, in the experimental stage ; but in the hands 
of a man of such inventive genius it is almost certain 
to be brought to success. 

Another British machine still in the experimental 
stage as we write is that which Dr. Barton, of 
Beckenham, is constructing for the War Office. The 
machine is, we are told, a com.bir.ation of the balloon- 



138 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

screw-propeller, and aero-plane principles, and will 
be, when completed, 200 feet in length. It will 
have a lifting capacity of between four and four and 
a half tons, the crew consisting of three men, and the 
vessel will be propelled by six screw-propellers driven 
by two light petrol-engines, capable of developing 
seventy-two horse-power. It is expected that its 
maximum speed will be thirty miles an hour. It will 
be equipped to remain in the air for forty-eight hours. 
The metal used is principally steel, which has been 
selected in preference to alum.inium, this having been 
considered more brittle and less durable. The two 
main features of the vessel will be its absolute sta- 
bility and its adjustable aero-planes. These are the 
essentials of the machine, and their principles are 
secrets which have not been divulged ; but it is under- 
stood that the means for maintaining the centre of the 
vessel's gravity will consist of two tanks at each end 
of the vessel, which will contain a quantity of water, 
to displace which small pumps will be utilised. The 
gas vessel will be divided into compartments, and 
will be made of silk. 

It is important to note that Dr. Barton believes 
that his machine will be able to fly without the 
assistance of the balloon, and hopes that ultimately 
the latter will be dispensed with. In the construction 
of his airship, he has calculated throughout for 
double the conditions imposed by the War Office, 
which are that the government would purchase the 
machine if it were able to travel thirteen miles an 
hour in a calm, to carry one man, and to remain in 
the air for two days. 



THE BEEDLE AIRSHIP. 



139 



There is yet another British airship to be noted, 
the invention of Mr. William Beedle, of Cape Town. 
It appears that Mr. Beedle is a resident of Cape 
Town, and an engineer who has been seven years in 
perfecting his machine. He claims to have reached 
the high-water mark in aerial navigation, and the 
fact that the well-known English firm of experts, 
Messrs. Spencer and Sons, is identified with him is 
proof of the merit of his invention. 

The plan of the Beedle airship is that of a car 




BEEDLE S MACHINE. 



suspended from a cylindrical balloon, holding 18,000 
feet of hydrogen. The length of the balloon is 
100 feet, and the diameter sixteen feet. The untear- 
able balloon skin is attached to the inside of six 
aluminium hoops, which are so placed as to render 
the balloon collapsible and provide a ready vacuum 
when refilling, and also increase the foot-power by 
forty-two pounds. Three lengths of nickel steel tub- 
ing, each eighty feet long, are attached to the hoops, 
to which are suspended the car, motor, and fans. 

Driving an airship is an accomplished fact, but 
where Mr. Beedle is thought to score over his rivals 
is in the steering and lifting. His steering gear is 



I40 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

at the front, and turns the nose of the craft, while his 
driving is done from the rear with a twenty-eight 
horse-power motor cooled with four air cylinders. 

The whole machine is portable, and we are assured 
that it marks a distinct advance upon Santos- 
Dumont's, Renard's, or Deutsch's ship. Mr. Beedle 
hopes to travel at the rate of forty miles an hour. He 
himself considers that his machine is greatly superior 
to Santos-Dumont's, of which Mr. Beedle says : 

^^ He uses a rudder which steers to the right and 
left, and does not possess the fine points of steerage 
which I claim to have invented." 

The weight of the machine is 1,260 pounds, and 
the loss of gas during an ascent will be overcome 
by compressed gas carried in a tube. The lifting 
power is just sufficient to raise the vessel from the 
ground, when the fan comes into play. The nose of 
the craft cants upwards, and away it goes in any 
wind. The machine carries two men. It has the 
w^armest approval of M. W. de Fonvielle, the cele- 
brated aeronaut, and it certainly appears to be a fa: 
more workmanlike production than the great spidery 
machine with which Santos-Dumont carried off the 
Deutsch prize. At the time of writing, trials have 
only been made with a thirty-feet model, but there 
is every reason to believe that the Beedle airship 
possesses all the qualities its inventor claims for it. 
It is to compete for the second Deutsch prize in 1902. 

Still one more British airship to be mentioned, and 
one differing totally from the Beedle or Maxim plans. 
Mr. T. Hugh Bastin, of Clapham, has been engaged 
upon the consideration of flying-machines for seven- 



COUNT ZEPPELIN'S AIRSHIP. I4I 

teen years, and has evolved a design which will 
reproduce mechanically the action of a bird's wings 
in supporting and moving a weight through the air. 

Mr. Bastin's drawings have been examined by an 
expert, who describes the invention as ''a mathematical 
triumph in which the employment of a differentiating 
crank secures the eccentric motion that is necessary 
to attain the reproduction of the beat of a bird's 
wings." The body of the ship is designed to be 
cylindrical in shape, and the construction of the wings 
is made upon the plan of those of a fly, inasmuch 
that it is ribbed and balanced to a thousandth part. 
One man controls the machine with a battery of five 
levers, and the rate of speed promised is abnormal. 

It will be gathered from this that the machine 
will have wings constructed on nature's plan, and 
will be heavier than the air, with power of controlling 
or counteracting its weight and of producing the 
energy necessary for progression and evolution. The 
machine will carry a considerable burden in addition 
to its structural weight, and the whole will be so 
distributed below the wings that the machine cannot 
be overturned. 

No account of airships of to-day can neglect to 
notice Count Zeppelin's amazing aerostat. This is 
on such a gigantic scale that the mind is positively 
appalled with a m/ental picture of it. Conceive, if 
you can, a large man-o'-war floating over Trafalgar 
Square, and you have some idea of this extraordinary 
ship of the air. It consists of a cigar-shaped vessel of 
aluminium, 420 feet long, thirty-eight feet in diameter, 
within which are enclosed seventeen separate balloons, 



142 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

each independent of the other, the total capacity 
being 14,780 cubic yards. Suspended from this 
monster ahiminium vessel are two small cars about 
ten feet long of the same metal, both situated some 
no feet from each end of the giant cylinder, and 
connected by means of a narrow gallery which 
affords a walking distance of 326 feet — longer than 
the decks of many ocean-going steamers. In the 




THE ZEPPELIN AIRSHIP OVER LAKE CONSTANCE, JULY 2ND, I9OO. 

bottoms of the cars are tanks containing water which 
is used for ballast, and they are connected with a 
speaking-tube, so that the occupants of the one can 
follow instructions from the other. There are two 
motors— one in each car— capable of developing 
sixteen horse-power each. The air-propellers are 
very small compared with the bulk of the entire 
machine, and rudders are fixed at both ends, but 
the steering gear at the nose of the craft is the more 



RIVALS TO SAXTOS-DUMONT. I43 

important. This enormous structure took years to 
build, and was tested in the summer of 1900 with 
satisfactory results, being easily dirigible and floating 
safely on the surface of the water when desired ; 
but its utility as a contribution to the solution of 
aerial navigation is very small indeed. It is as 
though the s.s. Britannic could only carry a dozen 
people on board, all told ! The energy expended 
is out of all proportion to the result obtained. 

The sensations caused by Santos-Dumont's failures 
and successes naturally produced a whole series of 
experiments in France, and in the autumn of 1901 
almost every day brought forth news of another 
flying-machine that was '' about to be tried," or 
would be put to the test '' at an early date." One 
of the m.ost forward of these rivals was M. Roze, 
whose airship was an accomplished fact before 
Santos-Dumont won the prize. The Roze airship 
differs from all its competitors in having two cigar- 
shaped balloons, with sharp metallic points placed 
on each side of the carriage. It depends for its 
buoyancy entirely on the lifting power of these 
balloons, and is furnished with screw propeller and 
rudder. 

In one day the Paris correspondent of the Daily 
News reported six fresh " rivals to Santos-Dumont." 
These were : Baron Bradsky, (an Austrian) whose 
airship was said to be very similar to that of the 
Brazilian aeronaut, and would be supported by means 
of a balloon — the now familiar cigar-shaped one — of 
a cubic capacity of 22,000 feet, and twenty-eight yards 
in length. The motor was to be one of tw^enty horse- 



144 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

power, instead of Santos-Dumont's (then) sixteen 
horse-power. Baron Bradsky was confident of success. 

Visitors to the 1900 Exhibition (the correspondent 
went on) may have noticed hanging up in one of 
the Champs-de-Mars galleries M. Ader's " Aviateur," 
or airship, looking like a gigantic bird. M. Ader is 
a Toulouse engineer and he hopes to be able to fly 
shortly. Colonel Renard and his brother, the major, 
are working at the military park of Meudon, and it 
is probable they will bring out something. The 
Marquis de Dion, who builds motor-cars, intends 
to build an airship, but no details are known. 
M. Deutsch, the founder of the ^^"4,000 prize, is com- 
peting for his own prize, or at least M. Tatin, a 
very able engineer and aeronaut who is w^orking in 
partnership with M. Deutsch, is. Lastly, M. de Simoni 
is designing, at Suresnes, an airship which will 
combine the principle of balloon and aero-plane. 

Assuredly, if we are not all flying about the skies a 
few years hence, it will not be for lack of experiments. 

A rival from his nat^ve land also came over from 
Brazil to compete with Santos-Dumont for the aerial 
supremacy in that memorable autumn. This was 
Senor Augusto Severo, a member of the Brazilian 
Chamber of Deputies. At the time of writing we 
have no facts to go on, but the Pall Mall corres- 
pondent's acco.unt of a visit to Seiior Severo's 
balloon shed at Vaugirard is interesting : 

" One sees only workmen screwing together a strong 
wooden framework, which is the base of the machine, 
and which will carry two motors, a large one of 
forty horse-power behind, and a sixteen horse-power 



'* GREAT EXPECTATIONS." I45 

one in f»'ont At present there is no si.:;n of the 
mechanical parts in aluminium — the motors and the 
seven great screws which are to act as propellers and 
as the steering apparatus — because they remain at 
the different engineering works, some in the imme- 
diate neighbourhood, some a considerable distance 
away. . . . Close to the dynamo are a number of 
great tanks, in which will be stored the hydrogen 
with which to inflate the balloon. It is somewhat 
singular that, bordering on this piece of ground is 
another wooden erection, also consecrated to the 
aeronautic science by an enthusiastic amateur. One 
begins to suspect that every street in Paris nurses 
some aspirant to aerial honours. It is amusing to 
hear M. Severo, in his voluble French, strongly tinged 
with an accent, describe the * Santos-Dumont ' as 'a 
great toy,' though he pays a handsome tribute to the 
pluck of his compatriot. M. Severo told me his 
experiment will cost him ^^3,000. If he is successful 
in directing his balloon round Paris, the problem of 
the air will be solved. * I shall then sail my ship to 
London, and next year I shall build one that will 
take me to Brazil.' There is nothing but cheery 
optimism about M. Severo." 

It was also announced in September, 1901, that 
the plan of another steerable balloon had been put 
forward by M. Jean Vannylen, a Belgian draftsman, 
which during a tempest would conquer wind currents 
in long journeys of hundreds of miles. The balloon 
was to be ready for the Deutsch prize of 1902. It 
was to cost 50,000 francs, of which 20,000 francs had 
been subscribed at the time of the announcement. 

10 



AN AUSTRIAN FAILURE. I47 

Sad was the fate of a machine invented by an 
Austrian rival to the young RraziHan. Herr W'ilhehn 
Kress is an old man and poor, who constructed a 
flying-machine of the "heavier than air" description. 
According to a Vienna correspondent, \\ ho examined 
his machine, it looked like a huge bird with three 
enormous wings. But close inspection showed that 
there were also five screws — two for driving, three for 
steering. These screws were worked by a powerful 
petroleum motor. The body of the machine was shaped 
like a boat, but had two keels parallel to one another. 
Kress's theory of aerial flight is in his own words 
thus expounded : " When a boy flies a kite he runs 
with it against the wind as fast as possible till it 
rises. I propose to drive my airship against the 
wind faster and faster till it rises. I call it for this 
reason the ' Kite-flyer.' Once in the air the three 
wings will aid the screw in sustaining the weight of 
the apparatus, which is considerable, the engine alone 
being 700 pounds." 

His confidence seemed justified, and experts re- 
ported so favourably on his apparatus that the 
Emperor Francis Joseph contributed i^2,ooo towards 
the expense of its construction, and many wealthy 
Austrians had also put money into the venture. 

But, alas ! for the sequel. On Thursday morning, 
October 4th, 1901, he took his airslu'p, which foated 
on water, across Lake Tullnerbach, near Pressbaum, 
and after adjusting his screws and levers he put on 
full speed for the ascent. The airship began to skim 
the surface of the water, and suddenly rose like 
a bird. Success seemed assured, but it was not 



14^^ TPIE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

for long. Something went wrong — what it was is 
not exactly known — the airship turned tuitle and 
fell into the water, in which it sank like a stone. 
Kress, who remained calm, was rescued by a boat. 
The ship was understood to be lost beyond recovery. 

One of the most curious reports circulated during 
these eventful days was to the effect that a factory 
had been erected in the town of Pittsburg, Texas, 
for the purpose of building airships on a plan invented 
by the Rev. B. Canon, a local clergyman, who asserted 
that he obtained his idea of the new principle from 
the book of Ezekiel in the Bible, and that he had 
reached an absolutely successful solution of the 
problem of aerial navigation. He was said to have 
completed his first airship, which had been tried at 
Pittsburg, with great success. This is all that we 
have heard of the " Texan," and the only passage sug- 
gesting aerial navigation that we can find in the 
book of Ezekiel is the following, which describes one 
of the prophet's visions by the River of Chebar : 

'' Out of the midst thereof (the opened heavens) 
came the likeness of four living creatures. And 
this was their appearance ; they had the likeness of 
a man. And every one had four faces, and every one 
had four wings. And their feet were straight feet; 
and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf's 
foot : and they sparkled like the colour of burnished 
brass. And they had the hands of a mian under 
their wings on their four sides ; and they four had 
their faces and their wings. Their wings were 
joined one to another ; they turned not when they 
went ; they went every one straight forward. . , , 



AN INGENIOUS KITE. I49 

Thus were their faces : and their w ings were stretched 
upward ; two wings of every one were joined one to 
another, and two covered their bodies. And they 
went every one straight forward : whither the spirit 
was to go, they went ; and they turned not when 
they went." This docs not read very Hke a practical 
guide to the art of flying. How is the Rev. B. Canon 
going to get over the difficulty of the cloven feet ? 
And the four faces ? 

Finally, we cannot pass from this subject without 
reference to the kite-flying experiments of Mr. S. F. 
Cody on Wanslread flats, early in November, 1901. 
His apparatus is extremely simple, and consists of 
four kites, the largest of all being a huge structure 
resembling the framework of an oblong box. The 
length of the structure is twenty-seven feet, the width 
thirteen feet, and the height five and a half feet, while 
there is a spread of 675 square feet of the best '' Irish' 
linen " canvas. To this is attached, by means of a 
cable at a distance of 100 feet, another smaller kite, 
similarly constructed, then another again, and finally, 
a " pilot kite." Mr. Cody is suspended in a basket- 
chair from the largest kite, which is connected by 
860 yards of cable wire to a windlass. The windlass 
with its patent brake — another invention of Mr. 
Cody's — is mounted on a moderate gun-carriage, 
which is made secure and stationary by means of 
a large spike fixed in the soil. The kite, of course, 
would be limited in use to captive ascents. 

Out of all these inventions and experiments it is 
not too much to hope that the perfected flying- 
machine will emerge at no far distant date. 



CHAPTER X. 

Is Aeiial Navigation Practicable ?— The Limits of Ballooning — 
Santos-Dumont's and Sir Hiram Maxim's opinions — A 
Humane Use for the Balloon. 

Is aerial navigation practicable ? "A foolish question/' 
you say. And ask, " What about Renard, Zeppelin, 
Santos-Dumont, and all the rest ? " Simply this : no 
one has yet been able to steer an airship in any but 
"favourable weather," or moderately adverse winds; 
and we know that vessels that are only seaworthy 
in calm weather are of little account for general 
purposes. 

There are men whose aeronautical experience 
entitles their opinions to our fullest confidence, who 
stoutly maintain that a steerable balloon is utterly 
impossible. They hold that Santos-Dumont has 
only proved that it is possible to make a short trip 
in a steerable balloon under favourable w^eather 
conditions, or, at most, when the atmosphere is 
not sufficiently disturbed to be equal to "rough 
weather," as reckoned by sailors. This had been 
proved before Santos-Dumont took to ballooning. 

But it is a curious fact that a great many inventions 
and discoveries have been made by men whose train- 
ing has lain quite outside the field into which they 

ISO 



HOW EIRDS YLV. I5I 

have brought new and undrcamt-of knowledge. 
Perhaps, after all, the veteran balloonist is the last 
man in the world to give a weighty opinion on this 
question ; the amateur, the professional ^' outsider," 
may be the very man to solve the problem, as he 
is bound by no traditions, affected by no prejudices 
of experience. 

Having taken our readers over a fairly compre- 
hensive survey of the rise and progress of ballooning, 
it may be well in this final chapter to examine 
frankly the pros and cons of the question of steering, 
even at the risk of a little repetition. And we might 
here remark that repetition in writing of ballooning is 
almost unavoidable, for, despite the wonderful variety 
of aeronautical experiences, no art or science has altered 
so little in the course of a hundred years, and the 
essentials of the subject admiit of very brief discussion. 

The flight of a bird has often been taken in 
illustration of the ideal to which men who would 
soar in the air must seek to attain. But there is not 
much to be learnt from the bird's flight, beyond one 
important fact There is no possible comparison 
between the anatomy of a bird and a man, and though 
it is possible to explain precisely how a bird flies, it 
is impossible to imitate it. To start with, a winged 
man would require pinions of enormous spread, and 
machinery of the m^ost complicated kind to keep 
them in action, in order to secure the ratio say 
between an eagle and its wings. It is proved that 
in the action of lifting its wings a bird meets with 
little or no resistance. This is known by the muscles 
used for that purpose being very weak, while those 



152 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

used for the downward sweep of the wings are ex- 
tremely powerful. It is also known that as the bird 
brings its wings downward they are inclined backward, 
and the resistance which they thus meet with from 
the air acts as leverage to raise the bird. Here, then, 
is a valuable principle for the aerial experimentalist. 
It is exactly the same principle on which a boy raises 
his kite. The kite is inclined at an angle against 
the wind and is thus forced upwards. Let us re- 
member this, for we shall have occasion to consider 
this principle presently. 

But we may dismiss from our thoughts all ideas 
of " imitating the birds in every respect " — they are 
cranks who pursue that kind of experiment. 

Thus are we limited to three kinds of aerial 
machines : the simple balloon ; the balloon comibined 
with machinery for steering and propelling it ; and 
the airship which dispenses completely with the 
balloon and relies solely on machinery for raising, 
lowering, flying, and directing its course. 

It is almost useless to discuss whether an ordinary 
balloon can be steered. The answer is an emphatic, 
No. Very early in the history of ballooning it was 
attempted, and for many years now no aeronaut has 
been so foolish as to try what has long been proved 
impossible. Remember the nature of a balloon. It 
is simply a silk or linen bag, filled with hydrogen 
or carburetted gas. Hydrogen weighs about one- 
fourteenth the weight of ordinary air, — the weight 
of which is about 530 grains per cubic foot, or nearly 
two pounds to a cubic yard, — while ordinary car- 
buretted gas is about one-half the weight of the 



THE LIMITS OF BALLOONING. 1 53 

air. These gases, enclosed in an envelope, can rise 
up through the air until they reach a region where 
they are but slightly lighter than the air itself. 
Weighted with a car and all the usual fittings of a 
balloon, including the aeronauts, they can never reach 
such a region, but float in atmosphere considerably 
heavier than the gas they contain. 

Their powder, however, is limited entirely to ascent. 
Descent is accomplished by liberating some of the 
gas until the weight of the atmosphere outside presses 
the balloon to earth. It is thus seen that the balloon 
is lighter than the element in which it floats, and 
is carried resistlessly Vv^ith that element. Try to 
make it go contrary, crosswise, to the motion of that 
element and you are trying to do something on a 
par w^ith attempting to force a quill pen through 
a w^ooden door. No ; an ordinary balloon has never 
been, and never can be steered to right or left. 

Some success, however, has been attained with 
aerostats of the Santos-Dumont type. That has 
been very fully described already, and we need not 
recapitulate, beyond stating that such machines have 
always been provided with balloons which, being 
pointed at the ends, give as little resistance as, 
possible to their passage through the air. But 
obviously the same difficulty of forcing the balloon 
against the air, which obtains in the case of an 
ordinary balloon when one attempts to steer it, must 
arise in the case of a Santos-Dumont or Zeppelin 
airship, modified to this extent, that the latter 
aerostats have also a mechanical means of propul- 
sion and are not dependent entirely on the wind for 



1 54 THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

motion. However, let us hear what Scnor Santos- 
Dumont has to say on this point. An interviewer 
asked him recently : 

" Do you find it difficult to maintain the rigidity 
of the balloon when driving against the wind ? " 

'' No/' he replied, ''that is counterbalanced by the 
interior pressure. Of course I have no framework 
for the balloon, but the atmospheric pressure brought 
to bear upon the interior answers. On the day that 
I rounded the Eiffel Tower the rate of the wind was 
certified by the meteorologic authorities as being 
eighteen miles an hour. In starting out I had that 
with me, and did the journey of nearly four miles in 
eight minutes. Coming back I had to fight against 
the wind." 

" And the speed of your new ship ? '^ [Xo. VII.] 

"That should be about forty miles an hour." 

" Fuel must be an important consideration." . 

" Fuel is the only form of ballast I carry. My 
motors will consume about sixty pounds of petroleum 
an hour. I shall be able to carry four hundred 
pounds of petroleum." 

By the way, it is only fair to the memory of 
Giffard, the famous French aeronaut, to state that 
fifty years before Santos-Dumont had achieved some 
success on the same lines, he built an elongated 
balloon which was pointed at both ends. Filled 
with illuminating gas, it had a sail which was to 
be used as a rudder. The balloon supported a 
small steam engine which operated a propeller. On 
September 24th, 1852, Giffard ascended S,ooo feet 
above Paris and steered his balloon against the wind, 



STEERABLE BALLOONS IN ROUGH WEATHER. 1 55 

returning safely to his landing-place. The Giffard 
balloon of 1852 and the Santos-Dainont model of 1901, 
have, as a matter of fact, a very strong resemblance. 

Notwithstanding Santos - Dumont's experience, 
Count Zeppelin — who, before the Brazilian rose to 
fame, had already ascended over Lake Constance, 
made a short journey in the air, and returned to his 
starting-place — has his balloon strengthened with a 
metal frame to prevent the air from pressing it out 
of shape, and it cannot be doubted that Santos- 
Dumont's balloon, forced against a very strong head 
wind, would run serious ri.-k of being squeezed out 
of shape, with the inevitable result of disaster. 
Indeed, his famous failure when he fell on the 
housetops of Paris was generally attributed to this, 
though the adventurous young aeronaut would appear 
to have persuaded himself that such was not the case. 

The prime objection to aerostats of this type is the 
fact that they must be of enormous size to carry even 
one man. Their lifting power in proportion to their 
size is ridiculously small. The "Santos-Dumcnt VII." 
with its inventor in the car is like Sandow sweating 
and straining under the weight of a butterfly. 

But they can be steered. That is the great thing. 
There we have an accomplished fact. They can be 
steered in fair w^eather, not in foul. As surely as 
an ordinary balloon not relying on machinery for 
motion can never be directed, so surely can a Zeppelin 
or Santos-Dumont airship never be guided through 
the skies with the wand blowing ''more nor 'alf a 
gale." To achieve that the balloon part must be 
done away with. Senor Santos-Dumont says: 



156 THE CONQUEST 'OF THE AIR. 

** I expect that a way will be found of dispensing 
with the balloon and of relying upon the motors 
altogether before very long, but until we get that we 
must make the best use of what we have." 

Let us now hear what the most famous experi- 
m.enter on the lines of machinery apart from balloons, 
or " heavier than air " machines, has to say on the 
subject. 

" A kite held up against the wind," writes Sir 
Hiram Maxim, " has very great lifting power with 
a wind of forty miles an hour, so an aero-plane 
having a velocity through the air of forty miles an 
hour has very great lifting effect. With a balloon 
high speed is impossible. With an aero-plane speed 
is a necessity, otherwise insufficient lifting effect 
will be produced. I am therefore strongly of the 
opinion that we must look to machines heavier than 
the air, which, in reality, fly after the manner of 
birds. Nature has innumerable flying-machines, 
which are all heavier than the air, but Nature has 
no balloons. Therefore, if we wish to succeed, we 
shall have to follow in the footsteps of Nature, as 
we have already done in many other branches of 
science." 

It will thus be gathered that Sir Hiram Maxim 
believes that the principle of the downward beat of 
the bird's wings is that on which the problem of 
rising into the.air by machinery will be solved. 

Writing thirty years ago, Camille Flammarion said : 
'^ A third method of aerial ^ navigation has been 
brought forward in recent times, which is based upon 
mechanical considerations. It has been sought to 



THE FUTURE. I 57 

navigate the atmosphere by means of machines 
essentially distinct in principle from balloons, heavier 
than the volume of air which they displace, and set 
in motion by powerful engines. This is doubtless 
the direction in which we must look for the future 
solution of the problem under consideration, unless, 
indeed, our knowledge of the currents of the atmo- 
sphere increases to such an extent as to render 
aerostatic navigation possible by their means." 

There can be no doubt that the future of aerial 
navigation is with some such machine as that on 
which Sir Hiram J^Iaxim is experimenting. It may 
be many \'ears before perfection is attained, but 
attained it will be some day, and we may live to see 

. . . the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, 
Pilots of the purple twilight, drop])ing down with costly bales. 

?^Ieanwhile, the old-fashioned balloon has by no 
means been displaced. F'or there is the other line 
of research to be prosecuted : the study of air 
currents. If the heavens could be charted as the 
ocean has been — and there is no reason to consider 
that impossible — the ordinary balloon would pass at 
once into a new sphere of usefulness. To know 
where a certain wind was blowing would only be 
the prelude to rising into that wind and floating with 
it as far as one wished to be carried. To know 
where other winds were blowing would be to know 
which part of the skies to avoid drifting to. 

xAlready we possess a vast amount of knowledge 
on this subject. We have heard that ^I. Goddard 
contemplates a balloon voyage across the Atlantic. 



158 Tllfe CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

Speaking about this a French aeronaut of wide ex- 
perience said to a magazine correspondent recently: 

" The two Atlantics, north and south, Hke all the 
rest of the earth, are divided into parallel meteoro- 
logical zones, which oscillate a little from south to 
north and inversely, following the movement of the 
sun's declination. The centre, or torrid zone, near 
the Equator, is that of calms and equatorial tempests. 
No balloonist would attempt its dangerous stretches — 
as dangerous in calm as in storm. The next, in the 
North Atlantic, is the tropical zone or that of the 
trade winds. It is very well-known, but its general 
air-current, though so regular, would have the danger 
for the balloonist of conducting him too regularly into 
the bad preceding zone. Next comes our own zone 
— the temperate. It is this that M. Goddard will 
attempt to exploit, seeking to s:art off on a north 
branch of the trajectory of a depression. But, if 
you consult the pilots' charts, you will observe that 
many of the northern branches of these depressions 
trend up to the glacial regions, between Greenland 
and the Scandinavian Peninsula. I think it is useless 
to insist on the dangers of the glacial zone itself. It 
IS only too celebrated in ballooning annals since the 
going off of the unfortunate Andree. From the 
meteorological point of view, therefore, M. Goddard 
cannot derive much encouragement. Well, from 
another point of view, it is still worse. The solitudes 
of the ocean, always immense, have only increased 
since the disappearance of sailing vessels which were 
obliged to follow varied routes, complicated and 
lengthened by the probable winds which they were 



HUMANE USE FOR THE BALLOON. 1 59 

then obliged to study. To-day the great Atlantic 
liners follow narrow ocean ' lanes.' Outside them 
there is blank solitude. A floating balloon 'basket' 
might float without being seen for months should 
it happen to fall outside these ' lanes.' It is true 
that M. Goddard has the intention of carrying a little 
petroleum launch, but could he even mannge to float 
it in case he came down rapidly in an accident ?" 

The method of sending up pilot balloons to 
indicate the direction of the wind is the nearest 
approach at present to guiding the ordinary aerostat, 
but there still remain many uses for the non-steerable 
balloon. In September, 1901, for instance, some 
interesting experiments were conducted at Ostend 
to test the utility of a balloon for carrying life-lines 
from a wrecked ship to the shore. The experiments 
were conducted by Captain Regnaud, of the Ministry 
of Marine, and M. Vincent, an engineer, with a 
balloon prepared by Colonel Renard, wdiich carried 
a cable several kilometres in length. At first the 
attempt was a failure, as the balloon merely took the 
direction of the wind, which was blowing off-shore, 
and thus prevented the cables from reaching the 
land. MM. Regnaud and Vincent then attached 
the balloon to a Herve guide apparatus, such as 
was used in the Count de la Vaulx's unsuccessful 
attempt to cross the Mediterranean. This answeied 
admirably. 

On the whole, the experiments w^ere held to prove 
that a balloon carrying shore cables w^ould enormously 
mitigate the horrors of shipwreck on large liners and 
emigrant ships. It is indeed cheering to know that 



l6o THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR. 

such a noble use has been found for an invention 
that had for upwards of a hundred years been 
regarded as httle more than a toy or a means of 
providing adventure. The Herve guide apparatus, 
which has been described in an earher chapter, is, of 
course, only of use when saiHng over the water. 
Nothing is ever likely to displace Green's guide-rope 
for ballooning above the land. 

To sum up : the ordinary balloon will only be 
partially directable when the air-currents have been 
charted ; the ballon dirigible of the Zeppelin and 
Santos-Dumont type will never be controllable in 
strong head-winds ; to the '^ heavier than air " machine, 
using aero-planes on the Maxim principle, or some 
other invention, we must look for the final solution 
^f the problem of aerial navigation. 



THE END. 



DEC 



1902 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




013 527 067 2 _^ 



